


Children Of The Future Age

by AVAAntares



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Adoption, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Trauma, Devil Hunting, Diapers, Domestic, F/M, Family, Family Drama, Father-Son Relationship, Fatherhood, Forgiveness, Found Family, Gen, Guitar-Playing Dante, Kyrie actually gets to be a character, Mystery, Nero POV, Nightmares, Parenthood, Post-Devil May Cry 5, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Siblings, Rampant speculation about how the underworld works, Reconciliation, Rival Devil Hunters, Siblings, Team Bonding, Trish backstory, Vergil backstory, Violin-Playing Vergil, parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 50
Words: 197,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22911745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AVAAntares/pseuds/AVAAntares
Summary: After Dante and Vergil vanish while hunting a demon that has left a string of unconscious children in its wake, Nero struggles with the search for his missing father and uncle in between parenting an ever-growing pack of orphans and tracking down a mysterious rival.The path to restoration is a minefield of dark secrets, unsettling revelations, and surprising truths concerning his own lineage – all things he would be better equipped to process if he didn’t have two toddlers sharing his bedroom, a devil hunter crashed on his sofa, and a demonic clone of his grandmother eating pizza on the roof. His family life is… complicated.But there’s no time to simplify things, because a formidable enemy has followed him home to Fortuna, and it’s going to take more than swords, guns, or his nascent devil powers to keep his unconventional family intact.
Relationships: Dante & Vergil (Devil May Cry), Kyrie/Nero (Devil May Cry), Lady & Nero (Devil May Cry), Lady & Vergil (Devil May Cry), Nero & Vergil (Devil May Cry)
Comments: 287
Kudos: 532
Collections: Miscellaneous Must-read Fics





	1. Chapter 1

Vergil didn’t curse, as a rule.

It wasn’t that he was too polite; on the contrary, he was capable of flaying a target with words as effectively as with his sword. But of the motley assortment that made up the ever-expanding Devil May Cry roster, Vergil was the least likely to employ profane language to do so.

Nero was accustomed to hearing a fair amount of profanity when he was out with the full team. Dante’s speech was casually coarse. Trish and Lady weren’t above swearing, though they were more likely to invent creative euphemisms than throw four-letter words around. Nico was unilaterally insulting, her profane epithets ranging from the sexual to the personal. Nero himself was probably the foulest-mouthed of the lot—provided Kyrie was out of earshot.

Vergil, however, spoke only when necessary, and was careful to match the strength of his words to the situation that required them. He labeled things as he saw them: _This bickering is meaningless_ , he’d say, instead of telling the rowdy crew to shut up. _Foolishness_ was just that. If Vergil used a stronger word, the circumstances assuredly merited it.

So when Vergil saw their opponent and let out a startled, “Oh, _shit_ ,” Nero knew that things were about to go to hell.

* * *

It had started innocently enough. Not that anything was ever _innocent_ with this crew—more than half of them were, after all, descendants of the underworld, which made the very concept of innocence somewhat antithetical to them—but nothing in the previous day’s events had prepared Nero for what was to come.

“I’m so glad we drove all the way in from Fortuna for _that_ freak show,” Nero growled as they all tramped back into the lobby of Devil May Cry. It was a miserable Monday night, and the rain had started coming down in earnest just as they were leaving the warehouse.

“What’re you bitchin’ about?” Nico snapped back, rubbing her eyes. “ _You_ weren’t the one drivin’ all night, Mr. Naps-with-his-muddy-boots-all-over-my-dashboard.”

Nero rolled his eyes. “Driving’s your job, Nico. You’re part of this outfit, and you insist on taking a cut, but you’re not exactly out there in combat with the rest of us.”

“Excuse me? My _job_ is makin’ weapons for all of you, and fixin’ the ones you bust up. A little gratitude here?”

“ _Enough_.” Vergil’s voice had a way of snapping through a room like a whip crack. Nero wondered if it had something to do with his innate devil powers, or if it were a skill that could be cultivated. It sure would come in handy whenever he had to deal with that rambunctious flock of orphans Kyrie was always collecting… “The request was obviously a prank of some kind.”

Dante finished shaking the rain from his leather coat and tossed it toward the coat rack, where it seemingly miraculously hooked itself on a peg. “Trish took the call.”

“The client had the password.” Trish shrugged as she draped herself over Dante’s desk. Of the entire assembly, she was the only one who appeared dry—the advantage of being a full demon with power over her physical form, Nero assumed. “So if it were a prank, it was perpetrated by someone who knows how we work.”

“What have you done to piss off Morrison lately?” Lady called from the kitchenette, where she’d scavenged Dante’s lone dishcloth to rub the rain from her hair. Her gaze was fixed on Dante.

“Nothing!” Dante protested. “I even paid the rent on time!”

“ _This_ month,” Trish added. “But it doesn’t sound like Morrison to call us all together and send us full-storm into a warehouse full of inflatable clown dolls.”

Vergil’s eyes were flicking around the shop’s interior, taking stock of the trophies and Devil Arms that Dante insisted on keeping pegged to the wall. “It could have been a ruse to get us out of the way and leave this place unguarded. Is anything missing?”

“Not that I see.” Dante shrugged. “But if it were some kind of trick, why have us call in all the backup? Nero doesn’t even work in this city, and Lady was a hundred miles away when the request came in. If they wanted to empty the office, it would have been faster to just send the three of us on a wild goose chase, instead of getting the whole band back together.”

“Whatever. Let’s postpone solving the mystery until morning.” Nero dropped onto the battered leather sofa and began picking apart the mud-encrusted knots in the laces of his combat boots. “Okay if I crash here tonight? I’m beat.”

Nico frowned. “I thought you told Kyrie you’d be back in time for that thing tomorrow?”

“I’ll call her. I’m in no condition to drive, and you didn’t sleep at all last night—”

“Oh, so you noticed?”

“…so I don’t trust you behind the wheel, either.”

Nico scowled. “Fine. But I call dibs on the couch.”

“No way.” Nero kicked his still-booted feet up across the length of the sofa, staking his claim. “You can sleep over there.” He pointed to the shorter love seat near the stairs.

“That’s for midgets. You can’t expect me to squash myself onto that thing!”

“Well then, you can have all the room you like in your precious van.”

“No fair. The van _stinks!_ ”

“Should have cleaned those leftovers out of the refrigerator before leaving it parked in the sun for a week, then.”

Lady turned away from their bickering. “I don’t suppose you have a spare cot or anything? I came on my bike, and I don’t fancy riding all the way back to Bolingbroke in this downpour.”

“No cot, but you can have my room,” Dante offered. “I’ll just bunk in with Vergil.”

Vergil scowled. “You’ll do no such thing.”

Dante ignored the warning in his tone. “Oh, c’mon. We used to share a room when we were kids. What’s the big deal?”

“When was the last time you laundered your bedding?”

Dante absently scratched his shaggy hair. “Uh… what month is it?”

“I rest my case.” Vergil lifted his chin. “Lady will sleep in my bed.”

An awkward silence spread through the room as half a dozen pairs of eyes flicked between Vergil and Lady. The latter’s ears were slowly turning pink. “Um, that’s not…”

“It’s not an inconvenience. I don’t require much sleep.” Vergil turned and strode toward the shop’s back hallway. “I have some research to do tonight, anyway.”

Lady released a breath as they heard Vergil close the door of the former janitorial closet he’d converted into a study. She attempted to conceal her embarrassment at the misunderstanding behind a yawn. “Okay, then, I guess I’ll turn in. See you all in the morning.” She headed for the stairs.

“G’night.” Nero flopped back on the sofa, then remembered he still needed to call Kyrie. “Trish, can you hand me the phone?”

Trish glanced between Nero and the antique telephone with catlike mischief. “What, you’re too tired to walk the three steps to get it yourself?”

“If I get off this couch, Nico is gonna try to take my spot, and then things are gonna get _real_ messy.” Nero shot her a feral grin.

“Sounds fun.” Trish slid the phone to the farthest side of the desk from Nero’s position before hopping lightly to her feet. “I’ll be on the roof keeping watch, as usual. Sweet dreams, mortals.”

* * *

Nero was jolted awake early the next morning by the jangling of the telephone bell. After his call to Kyrie—which he’d made from the sofa, after defending his territory against Nico by dint of threats, insults, and a little creative maneuvering with his not-quite-corporeal right arm—he’d left the telephone on the floor within arm’s reach, too tired to get up and replace it on Dante’s desk. He swore and batted at the source of the noise, dislodging the receiver from the cradle.

He tried to go back to sleep, but the receiver was emitting a tinny, insistent sound that suspiciously resembled the word _hello_. Nero groaned and scooped up the instrument. “Devil May Cry,” he mumbled into the receiver.

There was a beat of silence. “Either that’s Nero, or Dante’s been hitting the sauce harder than usual,” came a gravelly voice.

Nero tossed an arm over his eyes to block the daylight that insisted on peeking through the blinds. “Nice to hear your voice too, Morrison.”

“Glad you’re in town, kid. Got a job for you. _All_ of you.”

“No thanks. I’ve had my fill of plastic clowns for the year.”

“Plastic—what are you talking about?”

“That wild goose chase we got sent on yesterday. Warehouse in Cymbeline City? Ring any bells?”

“None whatsoever. You been into Dante’s stash again?”

“Whatever,” Nero grumbled. “Anyway, I’m headed back to Fortuna as soon as Nico’s awake enough to drive.”

“You might not want to go back just yet.” Morrison’s tone grew serious. “Bad shit going down not far from where you are now. My informants say there’s been a big surge of demonic activity, and it involves kids.”

Nero groaned. Morrison had long since figured out the magic word that would keep Nero from refusing a job. Helping Kyrie with the orphanage was rewarding, but also maddening in some ways. “Okay, lay it out.”

“I don’t have much. Just an address and some secondhand accounts. Strange lights and noises coming from that old canning factory on the edge of town.”

“That could be anything. Vagrants camping out, kids having a rave. Doesn’t mean it’s something for us to handle.”

“When the cops went to check it out, they found an arcane seal burned into the factory floor.”

Nero frowned. “Some kinda ritual, maybe. Some idiot trying to summon something. Still doesn’t mean—”

“They also found three toddlers there. Stripped, half-starved, and drained of vitality. The official report said they were weak from exposure, but one of the responding officers went straight to the bar when he got off duty and started drinking to forget whatever he’d seen. Said it was like looking at the work of a vampire.”

Nero’s stomach churned. “What happened to the kids?”

“Dead. All three. Didn’t make it to the next morning.”

Anger boiled up in Nero’s chest, and he pushed himself upright. “Give me the address.”

* * *

The distinctive stench of sulfur mixed with rotting meat greeted them outside the warehouse. “Ugh,” Lady burst, fanning the air beneath her nose. “It smells even worse out here than it did in the van.”

“Smells like Nero’s dirty undies.” Nico shot a glare at Nero. She was still bitter about losing the duel for the sofa, and Nero knew she’d be impossible to live with for another day or two. Best to ignore her until she got distracted, or he could buy her forgiveness with some random bit of demon corpse for her experiments.

“Definitely something from the underworld,” Dante mused, turning in a circle. “Big, too. Feel that?”

Vergil gave a silent nod, and Trish oriented her head toward one end of the building. Nero tried to locate whatever it was they were reacting to, but apparently his one-quarter devil heritage didn’t give him quite the critical genetic mass necessary for that feat. He could sense the presence of powerful demons when they were very close, but at this distance he rarely felt more than a twinge at the back of his neck. He was only just beginning to be able to detect Dante or Vergil’s presence, and then only when they allowed him to.

Lady was used to being the only full human on the team, on the rare occasions that they worked a job together, and seemed to casually accept that they all shared perceptions beyond her own. “Just the one?” she asked as she loaded whichever rebuild of Kalina Ann she was carrying now.

“Only one big bad,” Dante replied. “Seems like there may be a few smaller vermin around, though. They’re always popping up like ants at a picnic.”

“So are we going in together, or splitting up?”

Dante shrugged and glanced at Vergil, who somehow had become the team’s default tactician in spite of his perpetual annoyance at being consulted. Nero hadn’t spent much time with his father, but the few missions they’d undertaken together since his return from the underworld had been enough to realize that _team player_ was not part of Vergil’s extensive vocabulary. “Two parties, entering from opposite ends of the building.” The corner of his mouth tightened in what might have passed for a smirk. “I won’t guarantee targets for everyone.”

“A free-for-all, huh?” Trish spun Luce and Ombra by the trigger guards. “Best get moving, then.”

Lady shouldered Kalina Ann and turned toward the building. “Girls on the right, boys on the left.”

Dante grinned. “Sounds good to me. Let’s roll!”

Nero grabbed a radio handset from the dashboard before jogging after Dante and Vergil, who were already striding toward the main entrance at the left end of the factory. “Stay in range,” he called over his shoulder to Nico. “I’ll call if we need you.”

Nico was already slumped on the van’s running board to wait. “Whatever,” she called, waving her cigarette in a shooing motion. “Don’t die, I guess.”

* * *

The factory’s outer doors were open, not that mundane door locks would have posed any obstacle to the hunters. Nero coughed reflexively as they stepped into the small reception area. In the enclosed space, the odor of rotting flesh was more concentrated, and breathing without gagging required effort. Nero watched Dante explore the room, apparently unfazed by the stench, and again wondered if that ability were due to innate power or discipline.

Then again, given the state of Dante’s office and sometimes-working plumbing, it was doubtful if Dante actually _had_ a functioning sense of smell.

Across the reception area, Vergil had gravitated to a bookcase and was leafing through a clip-ring records binder. “It looks as though this place closed down a little over a year ago. Plenty of time for something unsavory to move in.”

“There was plenty unsavory here when they were still open.” Dante pointed to a faded poster, which displayed a smiling cartoon fish leaping over a metal tin labeled _tuna alternative_. “I tried to eat some of that stuff once. Had the runs for a week.”

Vergil kept reading, merely flicking an eyebrow at his brother’s interjection. “That’s not surprising, given these reports. Apparently there was some doubt as to what type of meat, exactly, they were putting into their food products. There’s a letter warning of an impending investigation, but it seems the factory shut down production shortly afterward. No reason given; the records just stop.”

“That’s all fascinating, but can we hurry up and go kill some demons now?” Nero cut in. “I’m already gonna need a fire hose to get this smell off me.”

Vergil shut the binder with a _snap_ and replaced it on the shelf. “It only seemed fair to give Lady and Trish a head start. But they’ve had long enough. We can proceed.”

Nero studied his father’s face from the corner of his eye. Vergil’s delivery, as always, was completely dry, but Nero thought he detected that little crinkle at the corner of his lips that indicated a joke. It had taken Nero weeks of guarded communication to realize that Vergil even possessed a sense of humor, and he still had trouble reading him at times.

Dante summoned his sword to hand and kicked open the door that led to the factory floor. The wood splintered beneath his foot, leaving the locked knob wedged into the frame. “Any bets?”

“Six minutes,” Vergil said.

Nero’s nose burned as a new wave of stench rolled out through the opening. “Ten minutes. But only because Lady and Trish are going to argue about who gets the loot, and it’ll take us longer to get back to the van.”

Dante grinned. “Let’s beat ‘em to the prize. Five minutes.”

The trio moved into the factory proper, navigating through the corridors of silent machinery with swords and guns at the ready. Despite the daylight flooding the reception area, it was nearly dark within the windowless plant. Though Dante and Vergil seemed to find their way without difficulty, Nero’s eyes were straining for detail before long. “Think there’s any power here?” he asked after he’d tripped over something for the third time. “Not to point out the obvious, but it’s pretty dark.”

“Is that a problem?” Nero could tell from Dante’s voice that he’d turned around and was walking backwards, watching him. “You mean you can’t see me right now?”

“I’m good in twilight, but not when it’s pitch black. And stop making that face.”

Dante laughed. “Thought you couldn’t see me.”

“I don’t need to. I can feel the ugly rolling off—ow! Son of a…” Nero hissed as he stumbled forward. “At least tell me when there’s a step up, jackass!”

“It will be lighter up ahead,” Vergil interjected.

Nero was about to ask how he knew when they rounded a corner and emerged into an aisle suffused with an eerie red glow. Tendrils of some vine-like organism from the underworld twined over the surrounding machinery. The fronds pulsed with a faint light, drenching the area in shades of blood.

The moment his eyes adjusted, Nero bolted forward and knelt beside a tiny human body sprawled across the floor. Laying his sword aside, he carefully turned the child over and swore at the sight of the emaciated limbs and slack face. The boy couldn’t have been more than five years old, if that. “He’s unconscious, but breathing. Barely.”

Dante had crouched beside him, sword still in hand, while Vergil stood guard at their back. “Poor kid. This is what Morrison said they found before, right?”

Nero nodded. “But the police already cleared the building, which means this is new. Something is bringing more kids here and draining them.” He reached for the radio he’d clipped to his belt. “Nico, come in.”

There was a short pause before the handset crackled to life. “Yo, didn’t take long for you to decide you need some help from your lowly little _driver_.”

“Not now, Nico. We found a kid. He’s unconscious.”

“Crap.” The mockery vanished from Nico’s voice. “What do you need me to do?”

“Bring a flashlight and blanket and come get him. He’s not far inside the door, in the main aisle. Just take him back to the van for now, try to keep him warm until we can get him to a hospital. I’ll let you know if we find any more victims.”

Reluctantly, Nero lowered the child’s cold, limp form back to the floor. There was a scrap of woolen fabric nearby, an old coat or blanket, and Nero gently draped it over the child’s bare body. “Let’s find the bastard that did this so I can put my fist through its face.”

The hairs at the nape of Nero’s neck began to prickle as they moved deeper into the room, responding to the presence of _something_ nearby, but their red-lit path across the factory revealed no enemies. The only living beings they discovered were two more children, both younger than the first and similarly drained. Nero quashed the nausea he felt at their condition and radioed Nico with their location.

After several minutes they came across a broad open space in the center of the factory floor, illuminated from above by more robust tendrils of the underworld vine. A complex magic circle was incised into the concrete. Judging by the scorch marks surrounding it, it had seen frequent use.

Dante knelt and traced the arcane symbols with his fingertips. “This is no casual cult job. This was purpose-built.”

Vergil made a slow circuit of the pattern. “It’s fairly advanced, for human work. Summoning and trapping, all in one circle.” He drummed his fingers thoughtfully against Yamato’s sheath for a moment. “Actually, this explains quite a lot.”

Nero and Dante exchanged glances before turning back to Vergil. “Explains what?”

“Dante’s stomach troubles,” Vergil said with that faint, amused turn to his lips. “Why purchase wholesome food ingredients when you can summon a nearly unlimited supply of meat-like material to put in your canned mystery product, at no charge?”

Nero’s stomach lurched. “You mean they were selling canned devil meat?”

Vergil shrugged. “Low-level demons, at least. I doubt a true devil would have had anything to fear from these humans.” He toed the edge of the circle. “This sort of magic would not have contained any creature of moderate strength. In fact—” He bent lower and traced his fingers across a crack in the concrete. “—that’s probably just what happened here. They summoned something more powerful than they had intended, and it broke free. I suspect those responsible reaped their just reward.”

“Except whatever they brought over is still here, and is preying on those kids.” Nero’s jaw clenched. “So let’s find it, and put this place out of business for good.”

“Good plan.” Dante glanced around the factory. “It’s weird. I can feel something in here with us, but I can’t tell _where_ it is, exactly.”

Vergil stood and dusted his hand against his coat. “Lady and Trish also have yet to put in an appearance. Perhaps they’ve drawn it out toward the back.”

“Well, let’s get after it while there’s still something to get after.”

They continued across the plant, but their progress was soon blocked by a heavy fire door, locks intact. “It can’t have come this way,” Dante said. “Although…” He put his ear to the door, and a moment later a low rumbling shook the concrete beneath their feet. “Yep, there goes Kalina Ann. Sounds like Trish and Lady are having a good time over there without us. Shall we join them?” He raised his sword, preparing to cleave through the steel.

“Wait.” Nero held out a hand. “These doors are key-locked, and so was the door we came through. That means whatever attacked those kids is probably still in this half of the building.”

Dante lowered his sword. “Yeah, I see your point. Don’t want that thing getting out into the city, whatever it is.” He glanced over at Vergil. “Spread out, or stick together?”

Vergil’s eyes flicked around the dim factory interior. “This machinery is like a labyrinth, and the demon could be hiding anywhere. We’ll need a higher vantage to reconnoiter the entire area.”

Nero pointed to a metal catwalk far above their heads. “There has to be an access ladder somewhere. Probably bolted to a wall.”

“Then let’s move around the perimeter until we find it.”

Their progress was soon blocked by a bank of equipment, and they turned into a narrow aisle between conveyor belts. They had only moved a few steps when Vergil and Dante froze mid-stride. Nero was jerked to a halt as Vergil’s forbidding arm slapped across his chest.

Dante’s blade glowed, flame-hued. Vergil’s hand hovered over Yamato’s hilt. The hair on Nero’s neck prickled, and he adjusted his grip on Red Queen.

Seconds later, a gleaming purple-black hulk came into view at the end of the aisle. Some form of demonic power poured off its body in iridescent waves, pooling on the floor before dissipating. The creature seemed to be sniffing the air, and its head soon oriented toward the group of hunters. Milky eyes blinked once, and its bifurcated jaw opened to reveal a luminous ball of violet energy seated at the back of a long tongue.

Dante’s weight rocked forward, preparatory to a full-on charge, but in that same instant Vergil shifted _back_ , recoiling from the creature. The move was so out of character that it distracted Nero completely. He tore his gaze from the demon to stare at his father, whose eyes had gone wide.

“Oh, _shit_ ,” Vergil said.

There was a blast of light, retina-searing after the near-darkness, and Yamato’s sheath struck Nero in the chest with sufficient force to launch him over the row of conveyor belts, through a stack of crates, and into the side of an industrial vat. New lights burst through his vision as his head slammed into the concrete, and then darkness claimed him completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Get comfy, folks, because this is going to be a LONG ride. If you're new to my stories, you can expect plenty of family drama, All The Feels, Actual Plot (TM), a couple of subplots, a side helping of physical combat, and a fair smattering of dry humor. By specific request from my ~~pet fangirl~~ early-chapters beta reader and a highly informal focus group, I've included a _lot_ more domestic downtime in this story than I ordinarily would, so when we get there, feel free to let me know in the comments how you feel about it so I know whether to stay with the slower pace or trim down future chapters before posting.
> 
> Updates will be weekly, transitioning to semi-weekly once I finish editing the last few chapters. Total chapter count may vary slightly depending on where I end up breaking scenes.
> 
> The title of this story, of course, comes from a William Blake poem (which I think is now required by fandom law for all DMC5 fics). It's the opening line of _A Little Girl Lost._


	2. Chapter 2

Nero rose to consciousness gradually, a diver surfacing from deep water. Muddled light and sound resolved into coherent sensations, though both were soon eclipsed by the scream of pain across his chest. He tried to draw a breath to ask where he was and what had happened, but the movement set off a new band of fireworks across his sternum, and the air escaped him as a groan.

“About time you woke up,” Nico’s terse drawl greeted him. “Thought I was gonna have to give Kyrie bad news.”

Nero cracked an eye and took in the neon twilight of Dante’s shop. Last he remembered, it had been midmorning. Had he been unconscious for so long? “What time is it?” he rasped. His throat felt like he’d swallowed a scouring pad.

“Just after six.” Nico let her chair, which had been rocked back on its hind legs, drop to all fours. The sound stabbed through Nero’s skull. “You got hit pretty good back there. Or pretty bad, I guess. A bunch o’ broken ribs and a big ol’ knock on the head. You seem to be healin’ up okay now, but you’ve been switched out like a light the last couple o’ days. I guess it took a while for your devil power thingy to fix your noggin.”

“ _Days?_ ” he echoed, eyes flashing wide when the words finally sank in. “Is Kyrie—”

“It’s _fine_ ,” Nico assured him. “I called her right away, an’ twice a day since, to update her. She knows exactly where an’ how you are. I would’a taken you straight back to Fortuna so she could take care o’ you herself, only I didn’t think you should travel in your condition. Figured I’d let you heal up some first.”

Nero ran an exploratory hand over his chest. The pain was intense, but his ribs felt more bruised than broken. His head was another matter; in addition to the acute pain of injury, he was suffering from something uncomfortably like a hangover. He could guess at the cause of that, at least. “Water?” he asked.

Nico grunted, but stood and moved to the kitchenette. “Only because I feel sorry for your beat-up ass,” she muttered when she returned holding a glass of water. “You gonna tell me what happened in there? What hit you?”

Nero struggled upright and drained the glass before answering. “Vergil,” he said, handing the cup back to her.

Nico’s eyes went wide. “Your daddy beat you up again?”

“He has _never_ —” The outrage was draining, and Nero slumped back against the cracked leather of the sofa. “I think he… pushed me out of the way. When that thing attacked. It happened fast.”

“What thing?” Nico frowned. “We didn’t find nothin' in there with you.”

“I don’t know what it was.” Nero closed his eyes and tried to remember, but all he could picture in his mind’s eye was a shadowy hulk and a violet ball of energy. “Big and ugly. Ask Dante or Vergil; they know more about what kinds of demons are what.”

Nico remained silent. That was suspicious in its own right, and doubly so when there was something she wanted to know. Nero opened one eye and pinned her with its gaze. “Where _are_ Dante and Vergil?”

Nico shifted in her seat. “I was kinda hopin’ you could tell me.”

Nero bolted upright, ignoring the fresh pain that lanced across his chest. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You’re the only one we found.” Nico’s fingers twisted in her lap; she seemed legitimately distressed. “I mean, we found a few more kids when we searched the building—all unconscious, like the ones you saw—but there was no sign o’ Dante or Vergil anywhere. Or any big demon thing, neither. Trish an’ Lady cleaned out all the little critters in the back room, but there was nothin’ big enough to give Dante any trouble.”

“They probably went after the demon. Chased it outside.”

“I’d think so too, except…” Nico turned to point at the coat rack. On it hung two long coats, one red and one deep blue. “Found their togs a couple aisles over from where we found you.”

Nero stared at the coats, trying to absorb this new information. “They wouldn’t have left those behind.”

Nico nodded. “Which means they must’a been vaporized, or somethin.’”

“That’s crazy.”

“You got a better explanation?”

He didn’t. Nero slumped back against the sofa and tried to remember what had happened. “We were all together,” he murmured. “Then this big purple demon showed up, and that’s when Vergil knocked me out of the way.” He frowned as a detail rose to the surface. “He was scared, I think.”

Nico blinked. “Who was scared? You mean Vergil?”

“Yeah. Seemed like it.”

“Boy, that knock on the head must’a addled your brains. Vergil don’t _get_ scared.” Despite her protests, Nico looked alarmed. Nero know she regarded his father with a mixture of awe, fascination and dislike, but she respected Vergil’s hunting prowess as much as Dante’s. Anything that could frighten Vergil had to be formidable indeed. The thought of an enemy like that on the loose was unnerving.

“Where are Trish and Lady?” Nero asked suddenly.

“Out hunting. They said the job’s not done ‘til they find whatever that thing was an’ kill it. They’re lookin’ for any sign o’ Dante or Vergil, too.”

Nero tried to rise. “I should help—”

“You should not,” Nico snapped, pushing him back down. “I promised Kyrie I’d keep you from doin’ anything stupid. Well, more stupid than usual,” she added with a fierce grin. “You’re on bed rest until further notice.”

Nero wanted to challenge her, but it was taking all his self-control not to grimace with each breath. In his condition, he was more of a liability than anything. _Dead weight_ , he thought bitterly.

Nico reached across to Dante’s desk and retrieved a mostly-empty pizza box. “Here,” she said, shoving a cold slice toward him. “Eat up. You need to replenish your energy.”

Nero stared at the unappetizing triangle, dotted with congealed grease, and felt his stomach lurch. He recalled Vergil’s revelation about the meat factory and wondered where the local pizzeria sourced its pepperoni. “You know, I’m really feeling more of a salad vibe right now…”

* * *

When Nero opened his eyes the next morning, it was to see Trish and Lady looming over him. He jerked fully awake and scrabbled upright on the sofa. “What?”

“See?” Trish shrugged and moved to park herself on Dante’s desk. “I told you he’d wake up on his own.”

Lady sighed. “Sorry. I didn’t want to disturb you, but…”

“I’m awake now.” Nero scrubbed his hands over his face. Grit and stubble abraded his palms, and he tried not to notice the sour taste in his mouth. He never had cleaned up after that reeking factory, and he felt completely disgusting. “You find anything?”

Lady shook her head. “No trace, except…” She glanced at Trish, who drew a pair of pistols from somewhere behind her back and held them up for him to see.

Nero blinked at this display. He’d seen Trish wield Luce and Ombra countless times; what was so important about…

Oh.

Not Luce and Ombra.

“Dante would _never_ leave Ebony and Ivory behind,” he said slowly. “Which means…”

“He didn’t leave that factory willingly. If at all.” Lady stared off toward the jukebox, the planes of her face tight with anxiety. “There’s no sign of a fight, either. It’s as though they just vanished, leaving everything they were carrying behind.”

“But not everything,” Nero cut in. “You didn’t find Yamato or Dante—the sword, I mean?”

Trish shook her head. “But those are Devil Arms. I suppose if there were something capable of completely eliminating devils as powerful as Dante or Vergil, it could have destroyed the souls in their weapons, as well.”

Nero tipped his head to rest on the back of the sofa. “So what do we do now?”

“I don’t know.” Lady paced aimlessly across the office. “I’m not sure there’s anything we _can_ do, except carry on.”

“So it’s just business as usual? Dante and Vergil vanish into thin air, and you just give up on them?” Nero’s temper flared, fueled by pain and anxiety. “Like hell I’m going to just move on with my life and pretend everything’s fine!”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” Lady snapped. “Whatever attacked them is probably still out there, and even if it’s not, there are dozens of other sites with demons popping up all over this continent. _Someone_ has to keep protecting this world. I can’t take a hiatus from being a devil hunter just because my best friend goes missing!” The outburst seemed to drain Lady’s remaining energy. She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “I’ll keep looking,” she promised, more quietly. “I’ve already asked Morrison to put out feelers. If there’s any news of them, even a rumor, we’ll know.”

Nero’s gaze burned into the floor. He shouldn’t take his frustrations out on Lady, of all people. She’d known Dante and Vergil longer than any of them, and while they occasionally found themselves at odds, he knew the motley crew of hunters was the closest thing she had to a family. “Thanks,” he mumbled.

“In the mean time, you should prioritize getting back in fighting condition,” Trish said. “If and when we find that creature that attacked them, we may need your help to take it down.”

“Oh, I definitely want in on the kill,” Nero growled. The sound was echoed a second later by his gut, and he rubbed his stomach thoughtfully. “I haven’t had a proper meal in days. Where’s Nico?”

“She left the moment we got back. Said she had something to take care of.” Lady began piling her considerable arsenal of weapons onto Dante’s desk. “I’ll run out and get us all something to eat. Any requests?”

“Something vaguely healthy would be great.” Nero stretched, and the stench clinging to his clothes made him grimace. “I’m gonna go clean up a bit first.”

* * *

After indulging in a lukewarm shower—apparently Dante’s water heater was on the fritz again—Nero seated himself at Dante’s desk and dialed long distance. He’d have to chip in something for this month’s phone bill, he supposed; he knew Dante couldn’t afford so many calls to Fortuna…

The sudden realization that Dante might never pay another phone bill blindsided him so thoroughly that he didn’t respond when Kyrie first picked up. “Nico?” he heard her repeating. “Is that you?” He heard a clicking sound, as though she were wiggling the wire. “I think the connection might be bad…”

“It’s me,” he blurted when his brain caught up. “Hey.”

“Nero!” Kyrie’s sweet voice quavered in relief, and Nero’s heart flopped into a synchronous rhythm. “I was so worried!”

“I know. I wanted to let you know I’m okay.”

“Are you, really? I told Nico to take you to a doctor if you need one. We’ll find a way to pay for it…”

“No, there’s no need for that. I’m fine. Back on my feet now, and everything.”

There was silence on the line for a moment. “Is there any news about your father or uncle?" Kyrie sounded almost apologetic, as though speaking the question aloud might invoke bad news. "Nico told me they were missing.”

“Nothing so far.” Nero swallowed against the tightness in his throat. “But they’ll turn up sooner or later. I mean, they survived jumping into the underworld, right? And if you believe Nico’s crazy stories, Vergil’s already died and come back two or three times.” He tried to infuse a smile into his voice to reassure her, but he could tell from her sigh that it wasn’t working.

“It’s okay to be worried about them, Nero,” she chided gently. “You don’t have to pretend for my sake.”

He slumped against the receiver, wishing she weren’t hundreds of miles away so he could lean into her embrace directly. “I know. I just… I feel so useless. I didn’t do anything to protect them, and now I don’t know if I can do anything to help find them.”

“You just focus on recovering, for now. I know you’re probably tired of hearing that, but the best way to help them is to take care of yourself so you _can_ do something when the opportunity comes.” She hesitated before asking, “Are you coming home soon?”

“I don’t know yet. I guess it’ll depend on whether we can find any trace of whatever… took them.” He had to believe that Dante and Vergil had just been taken away, for now. The alternative was unthinkable. “I’ll let you know.”

“All right.” He could tell she was disappointed, but was trying to keep the brightness in her voice. “The kids have been asking about you.”

“Tell them all hello for me. I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

“I will.” She sighed. “I should probably let you go before this call gets any more expensive. But thank you for calling, Nero. And please… be careful.”

“Hey, you know me.” Nero toyed with the phone cord and debated a more affectionate farewell, but Trish was lurking near the jukebox, shamelessly eavesdropping. “I’ll talk to you soon, okay? Call you first thing tomorrow.”

“All right. I love you.”

“You, too.” He saw Trish smirk and tried to suppress the warmth that crept up his neck. “Bye.”

As he placed the receiver back in the cradle, Trish shot him a smug look and selected a song to play. Nero rolled his eyes as the strains of some maudlin pop ballad filled the office, a singer crooning about missing the one he loved. “Thought you could use a little mood music,” Trish said as she picked up a magazine and stretched her long legs out on the sofa.

Nero was saved from further mockery by the return of Lady, her arms laden with carrier bags. “Sorry it took so long. Lunch rush.” She deposited the bags on Dante’s desk and unloaded several cardboard boxes bearing the logo of the Chinese restaurant a few blocks away. “Chicken and broccoli, pot stickers, and sweet and sour pork. Not exactly health food, but my options were limited.”

Trish frowned. “No pizza?”

Lady sighed. “There are only two restaurants within a ten-block radius of this building, Trish. I chose the one that didn’t have a line out the door.”

“It’s fine,” Nero said quickly, reaching for the container of chicken and broccoli. “This smells great. Thanks.”

Lady opened a container of rice and scooped a pile onto one of the paper plates she’d brought with the food. “I guess your being hungry is a good sign. Whenever I have a concussion, I don’t feel up to eating until I’m pretty far on the mend.”

“How many concussions have you had?” Nero asked around a potsticker.

Lady laughed wryly. “I’ve lost count. That’s probably a sign of some kind of permanent brain damage, but in this line of work?” She shrugged. “I guess it could be a lot worse. I should just be glad I’m still around, right? Not all of us have a supernatural healing ability.”

Nero performed a quick headcount. “Huh. Now that I think about it, I guess you’re the only one who _doesn_ _’t_.”

“Well, what I lack in innate devil powers, I make up for in attitude.” She flashed a smile and reached for the container of pork. “Trish, if you want any food, better call it now.”

“I’ll order a pizza later.” Trish returned her attention to the magazine, an issue Nero was sure he’d seen lying around the office for at least his last three visits. Maybe Dante and Trish just couldn’t remember which ones they’d already read. Maybe it was a sign they _all_ had brain damage. He rubbed his bruised forehead and wondered how long it would be before he’d be reading the same thing over and over without realizing it.

Conversation paused as they chewed, and after a minute Lady looked over at the jukebox, her nose crinkled. “What the…? Where the hell is that _awful_ music coming from?”

Trish raised the magazine, but it didn’t entirely conceal her feline grin.


	3. Chapter 3

By Friday morning, Nero was thoroughly tired of waking up in Dante’s office.

After their shared feast of takeout Chinese the previous day, Trish and Lady had gone back to hunting, and Nero had slept through most of the evening, more from boredom than from fatigue. On Friday he woke early, called Kyrie, stretched, and even practiced a few sword drills—though he cut that short when his head began to ache again. He could move around the office with only minor discomfort, but it seemed his body wasn’t quite ready to swing Red Queen around.

After another tepid shower, he found himself regretting not packing a change of clothes. Nico still hadn’t returned, so Nero took advantage of the privacy to rinse his laundry in Dante’s bathroom sink—really more of a repurposed utility tub that Dante had scavenged from some dump after his previous plumbing fixtures had been shattered in a demon attack, but Nero couldn’t complain too much since the water was still running. For now.

Once his garments were hanging over the ersatz towel bar (a length of PVC pipe wired to mismatched screws) to dry, Nero wrapped himself in a threadbare towel and climbed the stairs to the living quarters. If Nico walked in and found him in the buff, he knew he’d never hear the end of it, so he would just borrow something to wear until his own clothes were dry. He doubted Dante would mind; he was surprisingly generous for someone who was perpetually broke. Perhaps he’d spent enough of his life in need of charity that he couldn’t bring himself to deny it to anyone else.

Or perhaps, Nero reflected as he stared at the utter chaos that was his uncle’s bedroom, Dante just knew that there was little risk of anyone _wanting_ to abscond with anything he owned. The narrow room had obviously never been intended as living space, though a sagging mattress had been crammed in the corner. Beneath the single grimy window, a cardboard box overflowed with garbage. A few wire coathangers dangled from a bare pipe across the ceiling, though more clothes were pitched in a mound in the corner of the room than were hanging on the makeshift rack. Nero didn’t need to approach the pile to tell that it was the dirty laundry; he could spot the blood stains and dirt from the door, and the smell spoke for itself.

Nero glanced down the hall to the next door and hesitated. He knew enough of Vergil’s self-imposed discipline to be certain his housekeeping would be a far sight better than Dante’s, but he was less confident about borrowing something from his father without asking. What would Vergil say if he suddenly returned and found Nero lounging in his wardrobe?

The thought of Vergil returning—suddenly or otherwise—tightened Nero’s chest in a way that had nothing to do with his injuries, and it felt as though fate had thrown down a gauntlet. He’d gladly submit to Vergil’s ire if it meant his return. Nero strode resolutely to the door, drew a deep breath, and pushed it open.

Vergil’s room was even smaller than Dante’s, little more than a windowless closet, but despite its austerity it was neatly ordered. A reading lamp sat beside the narrow cot—covered, predictably, with a blue duvet—and a few crisply-folded garments occupied a set of shelves that, upon closer inspection, had been constructed from two bare boards with cinder blocks supporting them. The only disarray in the room was the stack of books beside the bed, a precarious tower of thick volumes with scraps of paper folded between the pages. Nero eased himself to the floor to read their spines, and found a mix of classical literature and arcane manuscripts. One of the books was in Latin, another in Greek, and a third in an alphabet Nero didn’t recognize.

“Damn,” he murmured aloud. “I guess my old man’s some kinda genius. There goes my excuse for failing Algebra.”

From downstairs came the rattle of a door and Nico’s voice calling for him, and Nero lunged for clothing. “I’ll be right down!” he shouted. He pulled on the first garments his hands found before hurrying back down to the main level.

Nico had her back to him, fiddling with the coffee maker. As he approached she turned to greet him and froze, jaw dangling for a few seconds. “Whoo-ee,” she breathed when she’d recovered. “Thought for a sec that—” She shook her head quickly. “Never mind.”

Nero scowled. “What?”

“Nothin’.”

“Nico, _what?_ ”

She shoved her hands in her pockets and turned back to watch coffee dribble into the pot. “You just… looked like Vergil, for a second there. Wasn’t expectin’ that.”

The words hung awkwardly between them, and Nero clutched the towel he’d thrown over his shoulder. “I’m gonna go hang this up,” he muttered before heading for the bathroom. It was a poor excuse, he knew, but the sudden desire to find a mirror overwhelmed the facade of indifference he tried to maintain.

Nico’s claim wasn’t _exactly_ accurate, he mused as he considered his reflection. Vergil’s navy turtleneck hung loose on his narrower frame, and the cuffs of his trousers dragged the floor. But with his hair washed free of product and scruffed up by the towel, and the high collar setting off his jawline, there was no denying the resemblance. He laughed softly as he braced his hands on the utility sink. He’d only cut his hair short in the first place because Kyrie had made an offhand comment about the resemblance between himself and Dante, and he’d wanted to distinguish himself, lest someone think he was deliberately imitating the senior hunter.

He wondered now if Kyrie had been hinting at more with that remark. His father and uncle were twins, after all; it was laughable that Nero had never put the pieces together until Dante spelled it out for him. Kyrie, however, was more astute. She’d probably suspected all along that Sparda wasn’t the only relative they had in common.

For all the good that did him now. Despite their shared blood, the powers that _should_ have allowed him to sense his family members, he still couldn’t divine their location. Nero balled up the towel and chucked it into the shower with more than necessary force.

When he returned to the main room, Nico was flopped on the sofa with an empty mug on the floor beside her. “I’m beat,” she said. “Gonna take a little nap.”

“After drinking almost half a pot of coffee?” Nero scrounged up a mug for himself and drained the carafe, then refilled it from the tap and started a second pot. He had a feeling one of them would need it sooner or later. “Where’ve you been, anyway? Lady and Trish didn’t know where you’d gone.”

“Had some things to do.”

“Such as?”

Nico groaned and dragged herself upright. “You’re not gonna let me rest, are you.”

“I just wondered what was so important that you left your critically-injured patient—” He pressed a hand to his chest and tried to look wounded. “—and vanished for two days.”

“You’re still alive, ain’tcha?” She scowled as she retrieved her mug from the floor, but stared into it in pensive silence before answering. “I went to check on those kids we found.”

Nero leaned back against Dante’s desk. “How are they doing?”

Nico shook her head, and Nero’s stomach clenched as he recalled what Morrison had told him. “The oldest boy, the first one you found, didn’t make it through the first night,” she went on. “The other little boy an’ the two girls, they held on a little longer, but I guess they died early yesterday.”

Nero swore under his breath. “Any idea what… what killed them?”

“Your guess is as good as anythin’ the hospital made up. Hypothermia, malnutrition, shock… everybody I asked had a different answer.”

“So we have no idea how the demon attacks its victims. Except that it apparently worked on Vergil and Dante, too.” The percolator sputtered and clicked off, and Nero retrieved the carafe and refilled Nico’s mug.

She nodded her thanks and sipped from it before speaking. “There’s some good news, though,” she added. “The babies seem to be doin’ okay.”

“What babies?”

“I told you we found some other kids when we was searchin’ the factory, didn’t I? We took six of ‘em to the hospital, total. Well, the two littlest ones pulled through. One o’ the docs thinks it’s somethin’ to do with their metabolisms bein’ so adaptable, or somethin’. I didn’t really get what he was sayin’, but all the kids that died were over the age of three, an’ the babies were real little, so I guess that’s what saved ‘em.”

“So it’s… what, some kind of disease?” Nero frowned. “No, that doesn’t make sense. Even a disease wouldn’t have made Dante and Vergil just vanish.”

“Unless that whatever-it-was demon _ate_ ‘em.”

“And spit out their clothes and guns afterward? When have you ever seen a demon be so picky?” Nero shook his head. “Besides, that doesn’t explain why all those kids were unconscious when we found them.” He sighed and dropped into Dante’s desk chair. “Still, I’m glad at least a couple of them came through it okay. It makes the whole thing feel a little less hopeless, knowing we at least did some good for somebody. Any idea where they came from?”

“Uh… nope.” Nico rotated the mug in her hands, avoiding his eyes.

Nero’s brow furrowed. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“I… nothin’!” She brought up her mug and slurped noisily.

“ _Nico._ Whose kids are those? Where did they all come from?”

“I don’t know, honest! The hospital had no idea, either. Even the police drew a blank.” She stared at the floor.

“Well, you’re acting awfully cagey for someone who’s told me everything they know.” He set aside his mug and crossed his arms, leveling his sternest look at her. “We can sit here all day if you want. I got no place to be.”

She caved. “Well… it’s just… nobody knew where those babies belonged, you see.”

“Yeah. And?”

“I asked what was gonna happen to ‘em. You know, because I felt kinda responsible for the little tykes, since I’d brought ‘em in an’ all.”

“And?”

“Well, they wouldn’t tell me, an’ I thought that was suspicious. So I kept on askin’, and finally I talked to a nurse, who got real upset. She said the hospital didn’t have any place to send ‘em.” A crease formed between Nico’s brows. “Seems like ever since what happened in Red Grave, all the official agencies got real shy. None of ‘em will so much as _touch_ any cases that might have somethin’ to do with demons. They just stall an’ stall until the problem goes away. Miles o’ red tape, she said.”

Nero frowned. “That’s not legal. They _have_ to provide care for a foundling child.”

“Uh, since when is _anythin_ _’_ legal when it comes to demon cover-ups? How do you think Morrison gets us half our mainland jobs? It sure ain’t private citizens hirin’ Devil May Cry to bust up demon nests.” She set her mug down and kneaded her fingers together. “So these babies, they were just gonna leave ‘em at the hospital an’ provide minimum care until somebody showed up to claim ‘em. The nurse said that meant they’d get just enough food an’ medicine to keep ‘em alive, but nothin’ else. Nobody to hold ‘em or play with ‘em or even potty train ‘em, if they were there that long.”

Nero’s fist connected with the desk. “Damn bureaucratic bastards. I’d like to give _them_ some ‘minimum care.’”

“’Course I didn’t believe her at first, so I made some calls. Child Services wouldn’t even talk to me, once they got the case number, an’ the Bolingbroke office gave me the same runaround. Red Grave shelter is full up. Capulet City Children’s Home said they can’t take any kids under age three. So…” Nico’s eyes flicked to Nero, then away, and suddenly he knew where this story was going. “So I called Kyrie.”

Nero groaned and dropped his forehead into his hands. “You didn’t.”

“I had to! You wouldn’t want those poor babies to be left all alone, would you?”

“Nico, we already have six kids at the house! Where the hell are we gonna put two more?”

“Well, even if you take ‘em to the orphanage on Fortuna, it’s better than leavin’ ‘em at that hospital, isn’t it?” She slumped back on the sofa, arms crossed. “Anyway, Kyrie said to bring ‘em on over. So I did. Drove there late last night, got the ferry over this mornin’, an’ left ‘em with her.”

Nero massaged his temples with his fingertips. Once Kyrie got her hands on a needy child, she never relinquished it until better care or a permanent home could be found—and on isolated Fortuna, he knew that meant being stuck with two more charges _indefinitely_. “I hope you like babysitting, Nico, because you’re now officially on rotation. I’m gonna have to take a _lot_ more jobs to make this work.”

Nico scowled. “If you’re takin’ more jobs, how do you expect me to babysit? Somebody’s gotta keep your ass outfitted! Those works of art don’t just make themselves, y’know!”

“And I assume you’d like to get paid for them?” he snapped. “Kyrie can stretch a dime to the end of the block, but babies are _expensive_. Especially if they need ongoing medical care.”

“They shouldn’t need that,” Nico said quickly. “Doc I talked to said they were lookin’ pretty healthy, last he checked ‘em. Just needed some feeding up.”

“Yeah, well, food doesn’t just magically appear on the table, either. _Especially_ in Fortuna.” Nero slumped back in his chair. “I was already wondering how much longer we can keep this up. There’s just not enough work there.”

“What’re you talkin’ about? Fortuna’s crawlin’ with demons.”

“Yeah, but not with people willing to pay to get rid of them.” He smiled grimly. “Or if they’re willing, they’re not able. Last month I took a job in the Harbor District and got paid in _pasta_.”

Unexpectedly, Nico brightened. “See? I _told_ you that Pasta Breaker was a good idea!”

“Yeah, kind of irrelevant now that I’ve got a working arm again.” He waggled the fingers of his right hand at her. “I can hold my own fork.”

“But why would you want to, when you could use a marvel of engineering like—”

“ _Nico_.”

She sighed and retrieved her coffee mug, throwing back the last mouthful as though it were a shot. “Nobody appreciates true art.”

Nero decided there was no advantage in continuing that discussion. “Have you heard from Lady or Trish?”

“They called to check in this morning, while I was drivin’ back. Guess they didn’t want to bother you in case you were sleepin’.”

“They find anything new?”

Nico shook her head. “Same as before. Factory’s empty, no trace of Dante, Vergil or demon. Lady said she was gonna try to run down some hunter contacts, see if anyone can figure out what that thing was.” She shot a look at Nero. “So… What do you want to do now that you’re feelin’ better?”

“What _can_ we do?” Nero tipped his head back, clinging to the lingering ache in his chest to ground himself. “I guess Lady’s right. We have to carry on. And for me, I guess that means going back to Fortuna and working my ass off. I’ve got a big family to feed.” _Bigger than I wanted_ , he thought, then reproached himself for his resentment. Nico was right; they couldn’t have left the children to suffer, and _any_ care the babies received was likely better than being cast aside as a bureaucratic inconvenience.

“Back to Fortuna.” Nico deflated a little. “I was afraid you’d say that. I’m gonna need a _lot_ more coffee if I’m gonna make that drive again.”

Nero stood and rinsed the carafe. “I’ll start a fresh pot.”


	4. Chapter 4

Kyrie met Nero at the door and folded him into a hug even before he could set down his bag. Some days she felt so fragile, so in need of protection, but today Nero was grateful for her quiet strength as he sank into the embrace. Their brief telephone conversations had bolstered his spirits during his convalescence, but nothing quite compared to the feeling of being in her arms, safe and cared for.

Nero knew he was part devil, and he’d wondered more than once if Kyrie were part angel. There was something unbelievably pure and sublime about her.

“I’m glad you’re home,” she murmured into his shoulder. “I was so worried when Nico said you’d been hurt.”

“I’m fine,” he assured her. Kyrie pulled back and frowned at the bandage at his temple. He ducked away as she reached up to touch it. “ _Really_. I’m okay.”

She didn’t look convinced, but tugged at his jacket instead. “Here, let me have this, and you can go in and sit down.” Nero had been sitting for hours in the van, but he dutifully dropped his bag and slipped out of the coat. Kyrie cocked her head at the turtleneck he wore underneath. “Are those clothes new? I don’t remember you having anything like that.”

“Just borrowed. Mine were getting a bit ripe.” He nudged the bag with his foot. She wouldn’t be happy that he’d wadded up his wet clothing, but he knew it wouldn’t be in the bag long enough to mildew. He’d offer to do the laundry tonight to make it up to her.

He had barely taken two steps further into the house when he was greeted by a chorus of young voices. “Nero’s back!” Julio shouted as he skidded into the hall. Carlo and Kyle were close behind, clamoring for his attention. Maria, the youngest of their current wards, padded out with arms raised in a silent request to be picked up. Scipio and Flavia, the newest additions to Kyrie’s orphan collection, hung back near the door to the kitchen, but observed the jubilant welcome with wide eyes.

“Boys! Quiet, please,” Kyrie chided the older children. They hushed obediently. “Nero’s not feeling well. You may greet him, but he can’t play with you right now.”

The excitement in Julio’s face turned to fear. “Are you sick?” he asked Nero.

“Not sick,” Nero hastened to assure him. Julio’s father had passed away after a prolonged illness, and he knew the boy lived in terror of disease. “Just a little banged up. I, uh, had a bad fall while I was working on the mainland.”

“I fell yesterday,” Carlo declared, holding up a knee to display a mottled bruise. “You should have Kyrie kiss it and make it better.”

“Um. Yeah, maybe later I will.” Nero felt his ears warm, and heard Kyrie’s muffled giggle. He hated how his pale complexion betrayed every hint of blush. “But what I _really_ need right now is something to eat. Who else is ready for snack time?”

The children raced off to the kitchen at those magic words. Kyrie turned back to him and touched his shoulder. “Are you _really_ all right, Nero?” she asked quietly.

Nero nodded. “Especially now that I’m home. I missed you.” He took advantage of the moment of privacy to give her a quick kiss. “We can talk later. Nico will be here as soon as she finishes gassing up the van, and I wasn’t kidding about being hungry. I’ve eaten something like three meals in the last five days.”

“Lucky for you, I did some baking yesterday.” She took his arm and led him toward the kitchen. “I have just the thing.”

* * *

After devouring two generous slices of Kyrie’s homemade apple cake, Nero draped himself over one end of the sofa while Kyrie put the younger children down for their afternoon naps. Julio led the older boys to the local park to play, and Nico returned to her own apartment- _cum_ -workshop to sleep off the long drive, leaving the house blessedly silent.

Nero hadn’t really felt tired, but he jerked awake when Kyrie sat next to him. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Guess I dozed off.”

“You probably need the rest.” Kyrie smoothed the bandage on his forehead. “You’re still healing.”

“I’ve done nothing _but_ rest for the last few days.”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t need it.” Kyrie turned him so that he was leaning back against her and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “But if you’d rather talk about what happened, we can do that instead.”

Nero sighed. “There isn’t much more to say. I already told you everything I can remember, and Trish and Lady didn’t find anything new when they went back to the factory. We aren’t any closer to figuring out what happened to Dante and Vergil.” She remained silent, waiting patiently for more, and he fidgeted in her embrace. “I just feel so helpless,” he mumbled after a pause. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if there’s anything I _can_ do.”

“I’m sorry. I know how hard it was for you the last time they left.”

“This is worse, though.” He tucked his head beneath her chin. “When they went to the underworld, I knew where they’d gone. I hated being left behind, I hated losing both of them right after I’d learned they were my family, but at least I knew _why_. But this is…” He bit his tongue before an unsavory word could slip out. “I don’t even know if they’re still _alive_. I don’t know if I should be out searching for them, or if they’re gone forever and I’ll never see them again.” His throat constricted, and he blinked against the burn in his eyes. “It’s stupid. It’s not like I even know them all that well…”

“It’s not stupid at all.” Kyrie’s arms tightened around him. “They’re your family, Nero. They’re part of who you are. And I know how much you looked up to Dante, even before you learned he was your uncle. Honestly, I’d be really worried if you _weren_ _’t_ upset that they’re missing.”

Nero was silent for a minute. “You know the worst thing,” he added when he’d worked up the courage, “I feel like it’s my fault, somehow. Like I should have done something different in that factory. Instead, I got knocked cold and let them face that thing on their own.”

“Didn’t you say your father pushed you out of the way?”

“I think so. But that doesn’t mean I should have let him.”

Kyrie pressed her cheek against his hair. “From what you told me yesterday, Vergil was the only one who recognized that demon. And he knows your abilities, doesn’t he? Surely if he thought you were any match for it, he wouldn’t have pushed you away.”

Nero’s cheeks burned. “Just because he didn’t think I was good enough to—”

“Nero.” There was a hint of exasperation in Kyrie’s voice. “Don’t you see? Your father _protected you_. When that demon attacked, he had only a split second to act. He could have pushed Dante to safety, or saved himself, but he didn’t. He chose to save _you_. What do you think that means?”

Nero wasn’t entirely comfortable following Kyrie’s line of reasoning. “That he thought I was the least likely to survive a direct attack,” he tried. It didn’t sound convincing, even to himself.

Kyrie wouldn’t let him dodge the obvious. “Or that his first and strongest instinct was to protect you. I know you always say he acts distant and cold, but if you meant nothing to him, he wouldn’t have bothered moving you out of harm’s way.”

“I guess you’re right,” Nero mumbled. The thought that Vergil actually might care for him in any paternal way left an unsettling warmth in his chest. It was much easier for everyone if he and his father were just business associates, their relationship defined by clear professional boundaries. Nero wasn’t used to having any family beyond the tenuous sibling status he’d shared with Kyrie and Credo after he’d left the orphanage to live with them. It was hard enough to know how to relate to a father who had been absent for most of his life, let alone one who had ripped his arm off and left him for dead, to say _nothing_ of one who had also been responsible for wiping out the population of a medium-sized city. True, Vergil had mended his ways—as far as Nero knew, anyway—since he and Dante had returned from the underworld, but their issues were certainly more complex than the average family’s.

Still, Vergil had reportedly done even worse to Dante than he had to Nero, and Dante had managed to forgive his brother’s crimes against himself and humanity. Maybe, when they got back, Nero could make more of an effort. He could invite Vergil out for a drink, maybe get to know him a bit better, understand why he’d done the things he…

With a jolt, Nero realized he was thinking in terms of the future again. He quickly crushed the seed of forethought before it could blossom into hope. He needed to focus on _now_ , and let the future look after itself. “Whatever attacked us is still out there,” he said. “If Lady and Trish don’t find it soon, I may have to go back and help them track it down.”

Kyrie’s arms squeezed him a little tighter. “Do you have to?”

“We can’t risk it hurting anyone else. If you’d seen what it did to those kids…” Suddenly he pushed upright, breaking free of her arms. “Wait, that’s right. Nico said she brought some of them here.”

Kyrie nodded. “They’re asleep in our room, poor lambs. They’re just babies, but they were so thin and weak when she brought them, I kept waking up during the night to check on them. I was almost afraid they wouldn’t wake up.”

“Yeah. Apparently the others we found didn’t.” Nero chose his next words carefully, aware of how deeply attached Kyrie became to any child who needed her help. “Are you _sure_ we’re the best people to look after them? It sounds like they might need more care than we can provide.”

She shook her head. “Nico already tried to find them a place on the mainland. I made some calls, too. Fortuna Charity Hospital wouldn’t take them, and the orphanage is already over capacity. There’s no other place for them to go. At least we can feed them and look after them, until a door opens.” She glanced at the antique console clock on the mantel. “Actually, it’s nearly time for their next feeding. Want to come see them?”

Nero followed her to the kitchen, where she prepared a lukewarm slurry of baby food and electrolyte formula, then helped her carry it upstairs to their bedroom. A portable baby crib was crammed into the space between the bed and window. Kyrie drew back the curtains, and the late afternoon sunlight slanted across two small forms curled close together in the crib. They squirmed in response to the light, and one of them emitted an unhappy squeak.

“How old do you think they are?” he asked as Kyrie scooped up one of the babies, loosely pinned into a tube of blue fabric that suspiciously resembled one of Nero’s old T-shirts. Immediately, the one left alone in the crib began to cry, and Nero picked it up to quiet it. This one was definitely swaddled in the remains of his favorite red sweatshirt. Granted, he hadn’t worn it since a demon had slashed the front open from collar to hem, but he was still sorry to see it reduced to a diaper cover.

“I wouldn’t think much more than a year.” Kyrie offered the baby in her arms a spoonful of the gloop she’d mixed. “They both have most of their teeth, but they aren’t speaking yet. Not to me, at least. They’ve been through a lot, though, so we’ll have to see what they do over the next few days.”

The baby in Nero’s arms squirmed and paddled its arms toward Kyrie and the other child. “Hold on, there, fella. You’ll get to eat next.” Nero hesitated. “Wait, is this one a boy or a girl?”

“They’re both boys.” Kyrie replaced the blue-wrapped baby in the crib and took the red one from Nero. “They’re so alike, they might even be twins. They’re certainly close to the same age.”

Baby Blue began fussing, so Nero picked him up and bounced him gently, glad that his years at the orphanage had at least prepared him for basic baby management. The child, recently fed and now held, began to blink deeply, and was soon leaning heavily on Nero’s shoulder.

Something eerie and yet familiar brushed Nero’s awareness, and he froze mid-bounce. What was he sensing? He leaned forward and scanned the street outside, but it was deserted. He didn’t feel any _danger_ , exactly, just a trace of… _something_.

He glanced down at the child now sleeping in his arms. Perhaps the demon had left some residual trace on its victims. He’d have to monitor them closely, since they had no idea what damage the creature had actually inflicted on them.

Baby Red soon finished his meal, and Kyrie laid him gently in the crib. Nero placed the second child beside him, and the two curled close together, almost by instinct. “See?” Kyrie whispered. “They’re used to being together, and get upset if they are separated for more than a moment. They must be twins.”

The sense that had prickled at the back of Nero’s mind had vanished, and he began to relax. “I don’t know about that. The only twins I know can’t stand each other half the time.”

“I suspect that’s a learned behavior, rather than a natural one,” Kyrie laughed. She watched the babies sleep for a moment. “What should we call them? We’ll need a way to distinguish between them.”

Nero silenced the inner voice that suggested naming them in memory of Dante and Vergil. He eyed his erstwhile shirts. “You remember how I got my name, right?”

“Of course I do. You were wrapped in a black blanket when I found you on the doorstep.”

“How about _Rosso_ and…” He frowned. “ _Blu_ isn’t much of a name, is it.”

“No, it isn’t. What about Z _affiro_?”

Nero nodded thoughtfully. “Rosso and Zaffiro.” It felt right somehow, a subtle tribute to his father and uncle without requiring him to fully accept that they were gone. “Now we just need to find some baby clothes in the right color, so we don’t mix them up.”

“Oh, leave that to me.” Kyrie flashed a triumphant grin. “I’ve been meaning to weed out those old, worn-out clothes of yours for some time, and you have plenty of red _and_ blue in your wardrobe.”

* * *

Nero slept late the next morning, at Kyrie’s insistence. He felt slightly guilty letting her care for all the children alone, but he had to admit it felt good to stay nestled in his own warm bed beneath a pile of quilts instead of roughing it on Dante’s leather sofa under a musty blanket that probably hadn’t been washed in several years. He didn’t blame Nico for installing him in the lobby of Dante’s shop instead of trying to wrangle him up the stairs to the living quarters, but that couch had _definitely_ not been designed for comfort.

The sun had crept well across the floor by the time Kyrie shook him fully awake. “Lady’s on the telephone,” she said, apology in her voice. “I wouldn’t have disturbed you, only I thought you’d want to speak with her.”

“Yeah, I do. Thanks.” Nero rubbed grit from his eyes and padded downstairs to the hard-line telephone in the kitchen, their only link to the mainland. Fortuna’s infrastructure still hadn’t recovered enough to provide reliable mobile phone service, and internet access was still just a rumor. “Hey, Lady. You find something?”

“Nothing definite,” she replied, her voice distorted over the archaic connection. “I’ve been doing some research, trying to narrow down what type of demon you might have encountered. I thought I’d give you some of the names on my short list, and maybe Nico can find something on them in her files. If we know what it is, we might be able to figure out what it’s capable of, or where it’s gone.”

“Good idea.” Nero reached for a notepad and copied down the dozen or so demons she listed. “None of those sound familiar, but I’ll ask Nico. It’s a long shot, but the Order kept a lot of secret files in the castle library. Maybe we can find something in the ruins.”

“Be careful going in there. The last thing we need is you getting hurt again.”

Nero wouldn’t have dared to roll his eyes where Lady could see him, but he knew she couldn’t, so he indulged. “Don’t worry about me. Nico’s been salvaging stuff from Agnus’s lab since the day she stepped off the ferry. She’s practically built a direct lift to the lower levels. It’s safe enough once you know what to watch out for.”

“If you say so.” Lady didn’t sound convinced. “How are you feeling?”

“A lot better. Still a bit bruised, but no lasting damage. I give it a day until Kyrie puts me back to work around here.” He winked at Kyrie, who had looked up from the tea she was making to protest his statement. “You and Trish still hunting that thing?”

Lady sighed. “Nominally yes, but there’s been no trace. It’s as though it just vanished. I’d think it went back to the underworld, but the summoning portal was disabled—and it only worked in one direction, anyhow.”

“Well, let me know as soon as you find anything, and we’ll come help. I don’t like the idea of you two going after that thing without backup.”

He could practically hear Lady’s eyes narrowing. “I hope you’re not suggesting that we girls can’t handle a hunt ourselves.”

“Uh, since I know that you could and would kick my ass, no, I’m not.”

Lady sighed. “Sorry. It’s a reflex at this point.” She sounded tired, and Nero wondered how much sleep she’d managed to get over the past few days.

“I’m serious, though. The only time I’ve _ever_ seen you and Trish lose a fight was against Urizen. It took Dante cranked to eleven to match Urizen’s strength, and that thing in the factory, whatever it was, took out both Dante _and_ Vergil. Knowing there’s something out there with that kind of power scares the hell out of me.”

“I know. And I think you’re right. It’s going to take all of us working together to have a chance at stopping this thing. Assuming we can find it,” she added bitterly.

“Keep me informed. I’ll let you know if Nico and I come up with anything here.”

“Will do. Take care of yourself, Nero.”

“You, too.”

When Nero had replaced the receiver on the cradle, he caught Kyrie watching him, her lips pressed into a line that signaled worry. “You have to go, don’t you.”

Nero pulled her in close. “Hey. Somebody’s got to put an end to this thing, and the list of people qualified to do that is pretty short.”

“Sometimes I wish it were longer.” She sighed and slipped her arms around his waist. “It’s not that I don’t have faith in your skills; you know I do. I just hate that you’re always the one in danger. Every time you get called out for a job, I’m afraid something will happen to you.”

Nero wanted to brush aside her concerns, to assure her that he was as invulnerable as Dante or Vergil, but such a promise would be hollow now—and if he were honest, recent events had staggered his own trust in his abilities. If Vergil hadn’t knocked him out of the way, he might never have come home from that last mission.

It was looking very likely that his father and uncle never would.

“It could be a while before they track it down, anyway,” he said instead. “Speaking of which, I need to call Nico. We have some research to do. I may have to make a run to the castle this afternoon.”

Kyrie pulled back to frown up at him. “Today? I was hoping you could watch the children this afternoon. I’m taking Maria to the orphanage after lunch.”

“What for?”

“To meet with the couple who want to adopt her. Did you forget?”

Nero groaned inwardly. “I had, yeah. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the interview.”

“It’s all right. You were working.” There was a note of resignation in her tone, which made Nero feel that much worse. “I suppose it’s best that you stayed at Dante’s that night, instead of coming back. If they’d gone to the factory without you, you might never have known what happened to them.”

“I still might never know,” he muttered before he could stop himself.

“And Rosso and Zaffiro might have died there,” she added pointedly. “At least you and Nico managed to save them.”

“I guess that’s true.” He thought of the two babies in their bedroom and wondered if Kyrie had already absconded with more of his old T-shirts. “Hey, it’s almost lunchtime and I’m not even dressed. I’m gonna go grab a shower.”

“Check on the babies before you do, please,” Kyrie called after him. “They might need fresh diapers.”

“Roger that.”

The boys did need changed, a task Nero had learned under duress when, as one of the older residents of Fortuna’s overcrowded orphanage, he’d been pressed into service to care for several of the younger children. At least he could perform a diaper change with record speed—which turned out to be absolutely necessary, as Rosso began fussing the moment Zaffiro was taken from the crib. “Keep your shirt on,” Nero muttered. “Or keep _my_ shirt on, I guess. What’s left of it.”

When the babies were clean and back in their crib, Nero took a moment to hide his favorite blue T-shirt, lest Kyrie scavenge it for baby clothes. It was old and faded and had a few small holes in the collar ribbing, but it fit him just right, and the cotton was velvet-soft.

He’d give his last dime or his last crumb of food to help an orphaned child, he mused as he headed for the shower, but every man had his limits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some general notes that aren't specific to this chapter, but I'm putting here now that we're in Fortuna: For story purposes, I’ve taken some minor liberties with both characters and geography. I doubt that anyone but the most dedicated purist will even notice, but if you spot any variation from canon, it was likely done with intent.
> 
> I’ve always assumed that the real-life model for Fortuna was Malta, given the visual similarities between the castle town and Valletta, but for this story I’ve moved Fortuna to the northern Adriatic Sea. That puts it far enough north to be properly cold in winter—since, after all, it’s snowing on Lamina Peak in the game—but close enough to Venice to account for the similar architecture. The official Capcom map of Fortuna is geologically implausible and clearly not to scale, so I’ve taken it as more of a suggestion and reworked its layout a bit.
> 
> The city where Dante has his shop is seldom seen and never named, and Red Grave City is a known composite of real-life London, Novi Sad and Milan, so just pick your favorite central European city for the location of Residential Area. A city in which 666 Slum Avenue would be an actual address. (Seriously, Capcom. _Seriously_.)
> 
> Character-wise, I’m using the orphans from _Before the Nightmare_ and the nuns from _Deadly Fortune_ , but virtually all their characterization is my own. I’ve done my best to flesh out Kyrie without openly contradicting canon (not that she is given much personality in canon...). I did also make one conscious change to Trish’s character, which it will be interesting to see if anyone even notices. (I’m only contradicting the DMC anime, and most fans ignore that anyway, so it’s hardly worth mentioning.)
> 
> If you have questions about any of this, feel free to ask!


	5. Chapter 5

“Malacoda,” Nero read. He and Nico were seated on the floor of her workshop, surrounded by precarious towers of books. The late afternoon sun slanted through the stacks like sunset over a city skyline.

Nico flipped through the tattered notebook in her lap. “Here it is. Big ugly red thing with a spiky tail.” She held up a sketch of the demon.

Nero shook his head and scratched through the name with a pencil. “We’re looking for something purple and kinda… I don’t know, lumpy, I guess. How about Cagnazzo?”

Nico had to look through two more books before she found it. “Wow, that is one ugly-ass dog.”

“So not that one, either.” Nero crossed off the final item on the list. “That’s all the names Lady gave me. So we’ve eliminated everything except for the two we couldn’t find any reference to: Nydoblast and Pestilate.”

“Guess we’ll have to go diggin’ in the ruins again.” Nico didn’t look pleased at the prospect.

“I thought you liked exploring the castle?”

“Only when there was good stuff there. Now that it’s pretty well picked over, it’s just depressing.” She straightened a teetering stack of reference books beside her. “Every time I go there I just end up thinkin’ about my lousy daddy.”

Nero watched her closely. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but… I always thought you were pretty much over him.”

“So did I.” Nico flopped back on the floor in the narrow space between piles of books and papers. “I never cared much about him, one way or th’other. But I guess…” She sighed. “I guess seein’ you get your daddy back an’ tryin’ to work things out with him made me a little jealous, or somethin’. I mean, both our dads did some pretty messed up shit. I just never got the chance to see if mine ever could’a been somethin’ better than he was, y’know?”

“Yeah, I get it.” Nero slid a stack of ring binders to one side and leaned back against the leg of Nico’s workbench. “I used to think about that sort of stuff a lot when I was younger. Nobody knew who my parents were, and there was this assumption that you were only left at the orphanage if your folks were bad people.”

“I guess they were half right. Your daddy ain’t exactly a saint.” Nico craned her neck to look at him. “You ever find out who your mama was?”

Nero shook his head. “The subject hasn’t come up. Vergil and I don’t really talk, unless it’s about a job.”

“You should ask him. When we get him an’ Dante back.”

Nero appreciated her optimism; he’d all but lost his. “I think I will.” He grasped the edge of the workbench and levered himself up off the floor with a grunt of effort. “Raiding the castle library will have to wait until tomorrow. I promised Kyrie I’d be back by the time dinner was ready, and I don’t want to be late. I already owe her a whole week of babysitting.”

“Mind if I crash? I don’t have anythin’ in the pantry but instant noodles.”

“You don’t even need to ask. You know Kyrie always cooks enough for fifteen people.” Nero stretched, feeling the gentle ache in his ribs. He was _almost_ fully healed. “But we’d better hustle if we’re gonna beat the dinner bell.”

* * *

Dinner was a festive affair, to mark Maria’s last night in their home. Her new parents were to take custody the following day. Given Fortuna’s declining population and depressed economy, it was rare for orphans to be adopted, so the occasion was cause for celebration. Kyrie brought out a candle-festooned cake after the supper dishes had been cleared, and Maria, somewhat confused by all the attention, made a valiant effort at blowing them out.

While the children were occupied with scraping every smear of chocolate frosting from their plates and forks, Kyrie leaned over to Nero. “They’ve asked me to come over with Maria in the morning, to ease the transition, but tomorrow’s a school holiday. Can you watch the children until lunchtime?”

Nero had hoped to make an early start to search the castle library, but he couldn’t very well compromise Maria’s comfort or Kyrie’s peace of mind for his own convenience. “Sure.” He glanced at Nico. “We can wait until afternoon.”

Nico frowned, but nodded her assent. They both knew the light in the ruins was better early in the day, but Kyrie had been managing the herd of children alone for a full week while Nero had been gone. “I can bring some more o’ my daddy’s research books over in the mornin’,” she offered. “We can keep lookin’ for that mystery monster while we wait.”

“Just don’t let Julio near them,” Kyrie whispered, darting a glance toward the child in question. “He’s starting to ask questions about what happened to the Order, and I don’t want him to get any wrong ideas before he hears the whole story.”

Nico gave a low whistle. “That oughta be an interestin’ tale,” she muttered. “Real storybook material.” Kyrie shot her a warning glance, and Nico raised her palms. “I won’t say a word,” she promised. “Pretty sure any story I told about my daddy would violate the ‘if you can’t say somethin’ nice’ rule, anyhow.”

* * *

Nero was up early the next day to bid Maria farewell. She’d only been with them a few months, but it was hard not to grow attached to a sunny three-year-old, and he knew he’d miss her smiles and unrestrained hugs. He repeatedly reminded himself how lucky she was to have found a family all her own, and focused on the more practical issue of the other seven children he still needed to provide for. Things had been tight since they’d taken in Scipio and Flavia, and Rosso and Zaffiro had definitely _not_ been in the budget.

After Kyrie and Maria had departed amid a chorus of farewells, Nero opened a container of homemade modeling dough, installed the children around the kitchen table with the suggestion that they sculpt some animals to make a play zoo, and retired to the living room to look over Kyrie’s household budget in search of any stray pennies they might be able to save.

Half an hour into his fruitless calculations, Nico shouldered open the front door, dragging a heavy duffel bag. “You’re welcome,” she declared, by way of greeting, as she lugged her burden into the living room.

Nero blinked up at her from the sofa. “Uh, thanks?”

“I went out to th’ castle first thing this morning an’ piled as many files an’ books as I could carry into the van. Got about half the Order’s library parked in the garage, I reckon.”

Nero’s jaw dropped. “Nico! You know better than to wander around alone out there! There are still demons crawling out of that lab!”

“Yeah, I met one. One o’ them scarecrow buggers. Beat it to death with a wrench.”

“You…” Nero massaged his forehead. “Sometimes I wonder how you’re still alive.”

“I am, though, ain’t I? So stop bitchin’ an’ grab the next bag.”

There was a gasp from the doorway, and Nero whirled to see a cluster of children watching them. “Bad word,” Kyle whispered, his eyes wide. He clutched a misshapen dough creature to his chest. Nero wasn’t sure if it was intended to be a dinosaur or a pony.

“Yes, that was a _very_ bad word, Nico.” Nero shot her a warning look. “You shouldn’t use language like that in front of the kids. Kyrie wouldn’t like it.”

Nico squinted in thought, apparently trying to figure out which word had been objectionable. “Sorry, kids. You’re absolutely right, ‘ain’t’ ain— _isn_ _’t_ a proper word, an’ you shouldn’t say it.”

Nero groaned and shooed the kids back into the kitchen, where the table was strewn with the carcasses of dino-ponies and lumpy snakes. “Stay in here for a few minutes,” he told them. “Nico and I have to move some heavy stuff.”

They retrieved a few more containers of books from the van, but quickly ran out of space in the compact living room. “We could put some on the kitchen table,” Nico suggested.

“There’s a zoo on the kitchen table.”

“This whole place is a zoo,” Nico muttered, depositing a cardboard box filled with file folders behind the sofa.

Nero glared at her. “This is more than enough to start with. We’re never gonna get through all these in one day as it is. And there’s no way Kyrie will let us store them here.”

“They’ll have to go in the garage, then. I ain’t— _haven_ _’t_ got room for them at my place.”

Nero briefly considered correcting her misconception about her language, then decided it wasn’t worth the effort. “Kids, you can come out now,” he called. A moment later five heads poked around the corner, eyes boggling at the boxes and bags of books. Carlo sneezed, and Nero opened a window to let the ancient dust filter out of the room.

“Shame the Order didn’t understand digital media,” Nico muttered as she hefted a heavy box onto the coffee table. “Though I suppose print is more reliable, given the state of the castle. This stuff gets wet, it’s still readable once you dry it out.”

“And it’s not like paper becomes obsolete.” Nero hefted a volume that, judging by its flaking leather cover and gilt edges, was well over a century old. He opened it at random to a woodcut showing a lesser demon impaling a medieval villager, and slammed it shut before any of the children could catch a glimpse of it. “Right. Hey, kiddos, looks like it’s a real nice day out. You wanna go play in the park?”

Julio was eying the books with curiosity. “I’d rather help you with the books. I’m a real good reader.”

At any other time, his enthusiasm would have been commendable. “I know how good you are at reading, but this is grown-up stuff,” Nero told him.

Carlo’s nose crinkled. “Like kissing?”

Nico burst out laughing, and Nero’s ears warmed. He knew Kyrie had had to field questions from the children about their relationship, but it didn’t make it any less awkward. “Not exactly. It’s more like…”

“Politics,” Nico cut in. “Real adult stuff, like who we’re gonna vote for, an’ who’s got the best economic development plan for the city.”

The light of interest vanished from Julio’s eyes. “Oh. Okay, then. Can we take the ball?”

“If you clean up in the kitchen before you go.”

There was a scramble to put the unused clay away, though Kyle insisted on leaving his equine hybrid out to dry so he could add it to their collection of animal toys. When they’d finished, Nero went to a closet and retrieved a faded playground ball from the top shelf. “Don’t kick it through any windows. Everybody got their jackets?”

Four of the children had already wriggled into their coats, but Scipio hung back. “I want to play blocks,” he said.

“Play _with_ blocks,” Nero corrected automatically. Scipio was nearly six, but he was only just learning to read English and had shown relatively little interest in books, so he wasn’t likely to sneak any of them off to read on his own. Nero glanced at Nico, who shrugged. “Okay, Scipio, you can stay here if you want. Julio, make sure you don’t go too fast for Flavia, all right? She doesn’t know the way home from the park yet.”

Julio agreed, and the four park-bound children pelted out the door. Scipio vanished into another room and returned with a cardboard box filled with wooden blocks. They were nothing fancy; Nero had used Nico’s power saw to cut them from lumber scraps he’d salvaged from a construction site, and the children had drawn crude brick patterns and fences on them with crayons. Still, the building blocks had quickly become a prized toy, and Nero noted Scipio’s shrewdness in waiting until the other children were out of the way to guarantee he got to use _all_ of them.

And he was about to use all of them right in the middle of their research session. “Uh, Scipio, wouldn’t you rather play with those on the kitchen table?”

Scipio shook his head. “The table move. The blocks fall. Floor is more…” He frowned, patting his palm on the worn hardwood, and glanced at Nero for help. “ _Non trema._ ”

Nero sifted through his rusty Italian vocabulary. Had he known a decade ago that he’d wind up caring for two children who spoke it as their first language, he might have studied Italian for more than the two-year minimum Fortuna’s schools mandated. Then again, had he known a decade ago that he’d wind up playing foster dad to half a dozen orphans, his teenage self might have _fled_ to Italy. “Doesn’t… shake? It’s more stable, I think is what you mean.”

“More stable,” Scipio echoed, and promptly upended the box in the small square of available floor space beside the coffee table.

Nero sighed and caught Nico’s eye. “We should get on with the _politics_ ,” he said pointedly.

“Right.” Nico flopped down in the worn armchair and paged through one of the ancient volumes. “This, uh, _politician_ is known for… um. Having very pointy… fingers, which it—he—uses to, uh, poke his… debate partners. He’s kinda skinny and dark-skinned.” She held up the book, trying to angle it away from Scipio, to show Nero a spidery demon with wicked-looking claws.

“No, I don’t think I’ll vote for him. I’m looking for someone a bit… fatter.” Nero flipped through another book. “Hey, here’s one. No picture, but there’s a description that mentions a purple… uh, business suit. We should look him up in the reference books and see if there’s any more information.” Nero scribbled the demon’s name in a notebook.

They continued browsing, making notes and setting aside books as they finished with them. After half an hour, a plaintive cry sounded from somewhere upstairs.

Nico’s head jerked up. “What’s that?”

“Rosso and Zaffiro,” Nero said, bookmarking his place. Nico gave him a blank look, and he added, “Those two babies from the factory. We had to give them names.”

“Ah. Careful—they say once you name somethin’, you keep it.” Nico grinned at him.

Nero rolled his eyes and pushed himself to his feet. “Why don’t you take the books we’re done with out to the van so we have some space, and I’ll go take care of the babies.”

She scowled. “Leavin’ the heavy liftin’ for me, I see.”

“You’d rather change diapers?”

“ _Ew_. No way.” Nico bolted to her feet, gingerly stepped over Scipio’s elaborate architectural creation, and collected the books into a box. “Be right back.”

Nero checked on the twins, who not only needed changed, but were unusually active and fussy this morning. Both of them resisted going back in the crib, clinging to Nero’s shirt with surprising strength. “Guess you guys are getting bored up here by yourselves,” he sighed. “Well, I guess you can come sit with us for a while.” He balanced one child in the crook of each elbow and carefully made his way downstairs.

Nico had returned by the time he reached the living room, and grinned at what must have been the ridiculously domestic picture he made with two babies in his arms. “What?”

“Don’t let Kyrie see you holdin’ ‘em, or she might get ideas.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“They look like they could be your kids.” She pointed to the back of one baby’s head. “Their little peach fuzz is so pale, it looks almost white.”

“Huh.” Now that Nero looked, they did have unruly tufts of light-colored hair. “Weird. I don’t remember them having much hair. Kyrie must have fluffed it up when she gave them their baths.” He noticed Nico’s close attention and held out one baby. “You wanna hold him?”

“Hel— _Heck_ no,” Nico corrected, with a quick glance at Scipio. “I already hit my yearly quota of baby-holdin’ when I took ‘em out of that factory.”

Nero knelt and placed the twins in the narrow gap left by the removal of the box of books. “Man, I don’t know what Kyrie’s been feeding them, but they weigh twice as much as they did the first time I picked them up.”

“They look bigger, too.” Nico shrugged. “I guess they were probably dehydrated or somethin’ when I first saw ‘em.”

Once free of Nero’s grasp, Rosso immediately began crawling around to explore the area. He first reached for the curtain cord, and Nero nearly toppled himself snatching it out of reach. “Sh…oot. I don’t know if we even have any baby-safe toys. Hey, Scipio, can you spare a couple of blocks?”

Scipio examined his dwindling pile of blocks with great concentration before handing over two triangular pieces. Nero gave one to each baby. Rosso immediately sank his teeth into the wood, while Zaffiro ignored his block and fixed his attention on a large gilt-stamped book leaning against the couch.

Nero stepped over the babies and resumed his previous place on the sofa. “Let me know if he starts chewing on that book or anything,” he told Nico, who had a better vantage of the twins.

“Probably won’t hurt him. It’s just leather and paper.”

“And whatever trace alchemical substances the Order may have been experimenting with,” Nero said. “Besides, it wouldn’t do the book any good, and we might need it.”

“Guess so.” Nico skimmed another page. “Hey, you said purple, right? Was it more like flames, or lightnin’?”

Nero closed his eyes and pictured the demon. “Not really either. It was almost like… You know when you open a freezer, and the vapor kinda pours out? It rolled off him, like that.”

“Hmm. Nothing like that in this description.” She turned a page, then glanced to one side. “Aw, that’s kinda cute.”

“What?” Nero leaned over the arm of the sofa to find Zaffiro clutching the book cover in one tiny hand. His other was pressed against the end paper.

“He saw me and started doing the same thing.” Nico turned a page back and forth in her book to demonstrate, and Zaffiro, with a look of great concentration, crinkled the page in his fist.

Nero gently slid his finger inside Zaffiro’s hand to pry it loose from the page. “Hey, squirt, don’t mess up the antiques,” he laughed. “You want to come up here and look at my book?” He lifted the baby and placed him on the couch. “There you go. Don’t tell Kyrie I let you look at these. They’re above your age level.”

On the floor, Rosso crawled over and retrieved Zaffiro’s discarded block. He tried cramming both triangles into his mouth at once, and when that didn’t work, he banged them together and laughed at the noise they made.

Nero watched long enough to be sure the roving baby wasn’t engaging in any potentially dangerous behavior before returning his attention to the book in his lap. Beside him, Zaffiro seemed mesmerized by the elaborate illustrations, and stared at each new page with wide eyes. Once, when Nero turned a page too soon, Zaffiro made a sound of protest and grasped at the book. Slowly, Nero turned the page back, and Zaffiro leaned over it, staring intently. He touched the pictured demon, a muscular creature with bull-like horns curving down on either side of its face, and said something like, “Da.”

Nero stared at Zaffiro. “What?”

“Da,” Zaffiro repeated. He whacked the book insistently with a palm. “Da.”

“Deep conversation you’re havin’ over there,” Nico remarked. “Write down ‘Sap Wraith’ in your notebook to look up later.”

Nero reached around the baby to add the name to the list, and waited until Zaffiro had withdrawn his hand to turn the page. The next demon pictured had a female torso and a snake’s tail. The artist had strategically placed the demon’s long, flowing hair to cover her bare breasts. On a whim, Nero showed the picture to Zaffiro. “What about this one?”

Zaffiro patted the demon’s long hair. “Mama,” he said distinctly.

“Well, what do you know. He’s talking! Kyrie said they weren’t talking.”

“Not sure I’d call it talkin’, but whatever makes you happy.” Nico set aside the book she’d finished and dragged a box closer to fish out another volume.

Rosso, seeing a new path open as the box moved, crawled through the gap and stared in apparent fascination at Scipio’s towering block masterpiece. Scipio gave the baby a suspicious glance. “No touch,” the boy warned.

Nico suddenly straightened in her seat. “Hey, Nero, listen to this: ‘It hath a fearsome countenance, being taller than a man in height, and swathed in smoke that doth flow over the earth as water. Upon its tongue it beareth the full moon, and from those upon whom it casteth its light, it devoureth the knowledge of age.”

Nero looked up. “That first part sounds a lot like what I saw. What’s that one called?”

Before Nico could answer, Scipio cried out, “ _No!_ ” An instant later the tower he’d built toppled with a resounding crash. A squeal of surprise followed, and Nero sprang up to see Rosso, a rectangular block in his hand, staring at the devastation with round eyes.

“ _Lo abbatt_ _é!_ ” Scipio shouted.

“He didn’t mean to,” Nero said, trying to pick his way around the table to mediate the situation.

“ _Era quasi finito!_ ” Scipio continued, red-faced. Beside him, Rosso reached for another block, and Scipio yanked it from his hand. “ _No!_ _È mio!_ ” He raised his hand as though to slap Rosso.

“Scipio!” Nero dove forward and caught the boy’s arm. He was certain Kyrie would handle this situation with more grace, but for now he could only try to prevent further disaster. “Go sit in the kitchen until you calm down. _Cucina. Vai._ ” Scipio stomped from the room, and Nero turned to Rosso, whose face was slowly pursing into an expression Nero knew all too well. “Uh-oh. Here it comes.”

Rosso’s eyes screwed up, and he let out a wail. His empty hand made a clutching motion, and Nero tried to replace the missing block with two of his fingers. He gently jiggled the tiny fist. “Hey, now, don’t cry.”

Rosso’s fingers tightened suddenly and with such force that Nero jerked his hand away reflexively. “Shit!” he burst, flexing his tingling fingers. “ _Damn_ , kid…”

Nico stared at him in shock. “Who’s usin’ bad words _now_?”

Nero ignored her in favor of staring hard at Rosso. His nascent devil sense was sending up every kind of warning flare, and this time the source was definitely centered on the child. Rosso’s face was flushed nearly as red as his clothing, and as the wail built into a proper scream, a crackling energy charged the air around him, lifting the hair on Nero’s arms.

“Oh,” Nero said, “shit.”

The child’s cry of rage increased, and veins of red lightning began to skitter across his skin.

“Shit,” Nero repeated. “Shit shit shitshitshit _shit_.”

Nico had leaped up onto her chair, as though an extra two feet of elevation might protect her. “What the _hell_?” she screeched. “The kid’s some kinda demon!”

Nero’s eyes flicked to Zaffiro, who, with wide eyes, was observing his twin’s outburst from the safety of the sofa. Nero made an educated guess of the damage a demon of Rosso’s size could inflict, decided it was worth the risk, then dove forward and wrapped himself around the baby. Rosso struggled for a few seconds, the bolts of energy burning the skin of Nero’s neck and arms, but gradually the angry cry subsided into miserable sobs before petering out into wet sniffles.

When Rosso had quieted, Nero loosened his hold and settled the baby in his lap. “Nico, pass me a tissue.”

“I don’t know if you’re fearless, or just plumb crazy.” She found the tissue box and tossed it to him.

Nero blotted the tears and snot from Rosso’s flushed face. The boy stared up at him, and Nero stared back, taking in the pale hair and translucent blue eyes he hadn’t noticed before. “Neither,” he answered Nico. “Right now, I am a frickin’ _genius_.”

She stared at him. “Yup, plumb crazy it is.”

Nero tickled Rosso’s cheek. Anger forgotten as quickly as it had blossomed, the boy grinned at the attention. Even so young, the smile was already slightly lopsided, showing his teeth. Eerily familiar.

“I thought so,” Nero murmured. “Hello there, Dante.”


	6. Chapter 6

Kyrie sat primly on the couch, hands folded in her lap, the very picture of calm attention. Nero knew her innate sense of kindness prevented her from expressing outright disbelief, though the long silence that had followed his revelation troubled him. If it were taking Kyrie this long to come up with a polite response, he couldn’t imagine what was actually going through her head.

“Could you say that again, please?” she said at last.

Nero cleared his throat. “I think Dante and Vergil have been turned into babies.”

Kyrie nodded slowly. “That’s what I thought you said.” Her gaze flicked briefly to Nico, still ensconced in the armchair, then back to Nero. “And you think Rosso and Zaffiro are your father and uncle.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure that Zaffiro is my father and Rosso is my uncle, but yes.”

“I see.” There was another long pause, and Nero found his palms sweating as he waited for her to speak. “And you think this because…”

“Because Rosso had a tantrum and popped out some kind of devil powers.” Nero’s words spilled out in a rush. “You don’t have to take my word for it. Nico saw it, too.”

Kyrie’s eyes shifted back to Nico, who held up her hands in defense. “I saw somethin,’ that’s for sure, but I’m not drawin’ any conclusions about who or what those kids are. Other than _hella_ scary.”

“But they do have…” Kyrie swallowed, letting some of her discomfort show. “…powers?”

“I don’t know about Little Boy Blue, but the kid in red put on a pretty impressive light show,” Nico confirmed. “Also he’s got a mighty loud set o’ lungs on him. But maybe all babies do. Never spent much time around real little tykes.”

Kyrie nodded again. “And where are the boys now?”

“Upstairs, in their crib. I put them down for a nap.” Nero scrubbed his damp palms on his jeans, fully aware of how ridiculous his theory sounded. “Look, it makes sense if you think about it. We couldn’t find any trace of Dante or Vergil themselves, only clothes and guns. And when Nico found the kids, they were naked, right? So… maybe they got shrunk out of their clothes.”

“But Nico found other children,” Kyrie pointed out, with a glance at Nico for confirmation. “If those boys are Dante and Vergil, where did all the others come from?”

“I don’t know. Vagrants, maybe, or other people who went to investigate the weird lights and sounds. But every other kid found at that factory, by us or the police, has died. The only ones to survive were those two. And we know Dante and Vergil can survive pretty much _anything_.”

Kyrie sighed deeply. “Nero, I know how badly you want to find your family, but this is very difficult to believe.”

“I know.”

“They both have to be at least… forty-something? Even if something _shrank_ them somehow, they couldn’t turn into year-old babies.”

Nero left his seat on the recently-cleared coffee table and paced in the narrow gap between piles of books. “I know how crazy it sounds, and I don’t have a clue how it could have happened. I’ve never heard of any kind of demon that could de-age somebody. But I know what I saw, I know what I _felt_ , and I don’t know what else to think. Those kids obviously aren’t human—not entirely, at least—and you said yourself that they’re probably twins.”

“Hey, what if one o’ them is human and the other is a copy?” Nico asked suddenly. “Like, a demon that can mimic a human? Maybe Baby Blue is the real human baby, and that demon just turned into a copy of him as camouflage. Maybe that’s why we couldn’t find any trace of it at the factory.”

Nero considered that option. “Have you ever heard of a demon mimic?”

“No, but there are plenty o’ demons that look human. Trish, for one. Maybe they can all do it.”

“That’s Trish’s true form. She was created as a copy of a specific person.” Nero didn’t know the details, but he’d once asked why Dante had a framed portrait of Trish on his desk, only to be told that the woman in the picture was Dante’s mother, of whom Trish was an exact replica. He’d found that strange enough at the time—though not half so jarring as when he’d later realized that Dante’s sexy, leather-clad sidekick was an avatar of his own grandmother. Then Nero had remembered meeting Gloria, and decided he was better off never thinking about that family connection again. _Ever_.

“Okay,” Nico conceded, “but Sparda probably looked mostly human-like, or else Dante and Vergil would’a had extra legs, or wings, or somethin’.”

“They do have wings,” Nero said. Nico stared at him in plain disbelief, and he realized she had never had opportunity to see them in their devil forms. “I mean, don’t run for the door, but so do I. It just takes a lot of power to pop ‘em out.”

“Shut the f… f… front door!” Nico caught herself, though her jaw still hung slack. “First you grow a new arm, then you tell me you have _wings?_ Lemme see! I wanna see ‘em!” She jumped up and ducked behind Nero’s shoulder, as though the extra limbs were hiding beneath the hood of his sweatshirt.

Nero crossed his arms. “Absolutely not.”

“Aw, c’mon!”

“Nico, you know this island is still crawling with demons. The _last_ thing I want to do is switch on a beacon to lure them right to my door. There’s no way they wouldn’t sense that kind of power. Besides…” He realized how loudly he was speaking and lowered his voice. “Scipio is just down the hall, and the other kids could come back any minute.”

“Oh. I guess you’d better not, then.” She leaned around Nero to look at Kyrie. “Does he look hot with ‘em?” Kyrie flushed pink, and Nero slapped Nico’s shoulder. “Ow! Okay! Jeez, can’t blame a girl for bein’ curious.” She slouched back into her chair. “What were we talkin’ about? Oh, right, Sparda. I guess he must’a had wings, then.”

“I don’t know about wings, but he most likely had horns,” Kyrie put in. “He’s always been depicted that way. The Order had renderings of him dating back over a thousand years. Though it’s said he could also take the form of a man when he wished.”

“Really?” Nico laughed. “You know, knowin’ that actually makes me feel a lot better. I’d been wonderin’ whether Dante’s mother was some kinda weirdo for makin’ babies with a demon.”

Kyrie’s cheeks went from pink to red, and Nero turned a sizzling glare on Nico. “Can we please focus on the issue at hand? We were talking about Rosso and Zaffiro.”

“It seems to me that the first question is safety,” Kyrie said quickly, no doubt relieved to steer away from the previous topic. “If Rosso and Zaffiro have any kind of powers, we first need to consider what that means for the welfare of the other children.”

Nero’s stomach sank. He’d been so distracted by Rosso’s manifested powers that he hadn’t even considered what might have happened if he hadn’t sent Scipio out of the room. Nero had been superficially shocked by the lightning display, but he was a lot more resilient than a human child. Scipio could have been seriously hurt. “What are you suggesting?”

“That we keep them separated from the others, at the very least.” A crease was growing between Kyrie’s brows. “And we may have to make alternate arrangements to house them.”

Nero nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, you’re right. A kid that age has no idea how to control his own physical strength, let alone that kind of power.”

“You probably oughta call in Lady and Trish. If those kids are demons, you’ll probably need their help.” Nico brightened. “Hey, maybe they’ll be able to tell whether or not they’re Dante and Vergil, or somethin’ else entirely.”

“You know, that’s the most helpful thing you’ve said yet.” Nero turned toward the kitchen. “I’ll make the call.”

* * *

Lady regarded Nero’s theory with as much skepticism as Kyrie had, but she promised that she and Trish would make the trip to Fortuna to see the twins. “It’s not as though we have any new leads here,” she sighed. The shabby long-distance connection distorted her voice, and an annoying clicking sound obscured occasional syllables. “Even a crazy idea like yours is better than the dead ends we’re hitting.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Nero retorted.

“I said we were coming, didn’t I?” He heard rustling on the other end of the phone. “My ferry schedule is a few years out of date. Do you know how often the boats run?”

“Only twice a day, since the Order stopped subsidizing them. First one leaves the mainland at eight in the morning. I think the other one’s in the early afternoon.”

“We won’t make the early one. I’ve still got to wrap up a couple things tonight, and I’ve got to get some sleep or I won’t be good to ride that far. We’ll head your way first thing tomorrow, and I guess we’ll see you for supper.”

“I’ll tell Kyrie to plan on two more plates. Any requests?”

Lady pitched her voice low. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m actually getting sick of pizza. It’s all Trish eats, and I haven’t had two minutes free to boil water in days.”

“That sounds like an order for homemade lasagna to me,” Nero grinned. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

When he returned to the living room, Scipio was cleaning up the blocks—apparently having been released from his time-out in the boys’ bedroom—but Kyrie was nowhere to be seen. “She’s upstairs,” Nico called from the sofa, where she was stretched out, frowning at Nero’s notebook. “Hey, you didn’t write down the name o’ that last de—uh, politician, did you? The one that sounded like what you saw?”

“I don’t think you told me the name. Or if you did, I didn’t hear it. There was kind of a big distraction at the time.”

“Dang it. With all the crazy stuff that was goin’ on, I must’a put down that book, an’ now I can’t remember what it was called.”

Nero started to suggest that she just look through the book again, but a glance at the chair she’d occupied revealed at least a dozen near-identical volumes piled around it. “I’ll help you go through the books again later. I need to talk to Kyrie before the rest of the kids get back.”

Nico tossed the notebook on top of a box of files. “In that case, I’m gonna go have a…” She glanced uncertainly at Scipio, then mimed holding a cigarette to Nero. “…a lollipop. In the garage.”

Nero rolled his eyes. “Right. Don’t leave any _candy wrappers_ on the floor.” He jogged up the steep stairs to their bedroom, where he found the twins nestled in their crib and Kyrie perched on the bed with her sewing basket. She was frowning at something navy blue that he thought might have been one of his old Henleys in another life. “Hey. Everything good up here?”

Kyrie nodded absently, then held up something that still more or less resembled a Henley, but now in miniature. “I’m trying to figure out how to fix this. I just measured them last night, but I must have done something wrong, because when I tried to put this on Zaffiro, it was far too tight.”

“You know, I thought they felt heavier today. Nico thinks they were dehydrated, and put on some weight since she brought them here.”

“That wouldn’t account for this much size difference.” Kyrie sighed and picked up a pair of thread scissors. “I suppose I can open the seams for now, and maybe make some kind of elastic loop so the buttons can fasten. Maybe if I use one of my hair ties…”

Nero sat beside her, careful not to disturb her sewing supplies. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Not with this, but if you’ll start a pot of water boiling, I can get dinner ready when I’m finished.”

“We having pasta tonight?”

Kyrie nodded. “I thought we should keep it simple, after last night.” Her smile turned rueful. “I probably shouldn’t have spent so much on one meal, but I wanted to do something special for Maria.”

“Maria loved it. And we’ll manage somehow, don’t worry.” He leaned over to kiss her cheek. “And don’t worry about dinner, either. I’ll cook tonight.”

She looked up in surprise. “Are you sure? I know you and Nico have work to do…”

“Nico’s gone out to pollute her lungs—and our garage—and you’ve been holding down the fort all week. You deserve a break. Besides, Lady and Trish will be here tomorrow night, and I know you won’t want me cooking when we have company.”

Kyrie shot him a knowing look. “Did you promise them lasagna?”

“I made no promises, except that it wouldn’t be pizza.” He donned his most innocent expression—which, judging by her eye roll, was none too convincing. “But since you brought it up…”

“All right. I know it’s your favorite.” She laughed as Nero pumped his fist in victory. “Now shoo. You’re sitting in my work space.”

Nero paused by the crib before leaving. Rosso was sleeping heavily, drooling on the blanket. Nero supposed he must be exhausted after his earlier outburst. Beside him, Zaffiro lay awake, quietly watching the curtain sway in the breeze from the open window. As Nero leaned over the crib, Zaffiro’s eyes fixed on him, curious and expectant, and a sense of something surreal gripped Nero. He had no pictures of himself as a baby, but somehow he knew this was what he’d looked like. “Their eyes are exactly the same color as mine,” Nero murmured.

“All babies have blue eyes,” Kyrie said patiently.

“Not ice blue, not like ours. And their hair is white. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before.”

“Their coloring is so fair, it could just be white-blond.” Kyrie set aside her sewing and came to stand next to him. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, Nero. I just don’t want you to convince yourself of something, and then be disappointed if it turns out it isn’t true.”

Nero released a breath, and his hand sought hers. “I’m almost more worried about what it means if I’m right. I mean… what if they’re stuck at this age? What are we going to do?”

“ _If_ you’re right, then we’ll do whatever we have to, to look after them.” Her fingers tightened on his. “Besides, it would be irresponsible to ask anyone else to take them on, given… who and what they are.”

“But am I supposed to… to _raise_ them? Adopt them? My own father…” His voice faltered. “I don’t know how to be a father. I never even _had_ a father.”

“You’re getting plenty of practice with the rest of our charges,” Kyrie said gently. “And I think you’re doing just fine.”

“I don’t feel like I am. That whole disaster with Scipio today… you would have handled it better. I don’t know what you would have done, but if you’d been there, I bet none of it would have happened.”

“If it hadn’t, you wouldn’t have known about Rosso’s abilities,” she pointed out. “Sometimes things happen for a reason.”

“And sometimes that reason is incompetence.” He scrubbed his free hand over his face. “Kyrie, I’m still learning how to use my own powers. And they each have _twice_ the devil blood I do. I don’t know if I can teach them how to control it. Hell, even Sparda must have had trouble, or Vergil wouldn’t have ended up like he did. What if it all goes wrong and I’m responsible for turning out the next generation of crazy world-ending demon hybrids?”

“Nero.” Kyrie hugged his arm close. “Let’s hold off panicking until we figure out if these boys even _are_ Vergil and Dante, all right?” As she spoke, sounds drifted up from downstairs: A door opening, followed by high-pitched voices chattering in excitement. “In the mean time, you have several other children downstairs who are in need of your wisdom, affection and guidance.” She rocked up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “Not to mention your spaghetti.”


	7. Chapter 7

_It was their first professional collaboration since Dante and Vergil had found their way out of the underworld. Nero_ _’s nerves had been raw since he’d received the call. He’d met his father on exactly two occasions: Before either of them knew they were related, Vergil had brutally severed Nero’s arm. Then, the day they’d both learned the truth, they’d each done their level best to beat the other unconscious._

_Neither encounter had set an auspicious precedent for a family outing, let alone a professional partnership._

_They studiously ignored each other in the van, and the moment they reached the job site, Vergil vanished around the back of the dilapidated building, saying something about a two-pronged attack. Looking after him, Dante sighed and muttered something that might have included the word_ _“coward” before leading Nero into the building through the front door._

_The two of them eliminated a nest of scraggly insect-like demons, then dispatched a cohort of leathery-looking corpses that Nero suspected had been infested with the same hive-minded Trypoxylus that plagued Fortuna in the form of Scarecrows. Once they_ _’d cleared the ground floor, Nero realized it was empty. “Where’s Vergil? I thought he was going to meet us inside.”_

_“He’s a couple floors above us, in the south wing.” Dante pointed. “Probably wanted to get the jump on the bigger demons. He hates fighting small fry like this. It’s hardly worth the effort if he doesn’t get to show off.”_

_Nero stared at him._ _“You can’t possibly know that.”_

_“Sure I do.” Dante grinned. “Believe it or not, he’s even more of an attention hog than me. Probably be on stage somewhere if he weren’t so keen on swords.”_

_“No, I can believe that part—two minutes with V was enough to know he’s a total drama queen. I mean, how do you know he’s in the south wing?”_

_Dante blinked at the question._ _“I just know.” He cocked his head. “Oh, he’s moving. Over there, now.” He pointed to the far corner of the large room they were in._

_Nero snorted._ _“You telling me you have some kinda Vergil radar?”_

_Dante had opened his mouth to reply when they were interrupted by the roar of crumbling masonry. The corner of the building Dante had pointed to sheared away with a stroke of blue light that could only have come from the Yamato, and the body of a large creature tumbled through the gap in a shower of bricks and acoustic tile before slowly dissolving into ash. Dante grinned._ _“Guess he found something worth fighting up there.”_

_Nero stared at the rays of sunlight streaming through the new opening, tracing stripes in the dust and ash that hung in the air._ _“Shit. I thought you were kidding. You mean you really can sense where he is?”_

_“Sure can.”_

_“How?”_

_Dante shrugged._ _“I can feel any demonic presence to some degree, but I guess the reception is better between us, or something. I always know when it’s Vergil, and vice versa.” He sobered. “That’s how I knew who Urizen was as soon as I stepped inside that demon tree.” Then the crease between his brows vanished, and the usual cocky grin spread across his face. “Meant we couldn’t play the same games as other kids, though. Hide-and-seek was kinda pointless.”_

_Nero ignored the attempt at deflection._ _“But you didn’t know who V was.”_

_“Nope. He was human.” Dante appeared to scan the room, but his expression had gone distant. He started toward the stairs._

_Nero followed, his next question sticking in his throat._ _“Can you… sense me?”_

_“Yup.”_

_That was all. No qualification, no explanation, and then Dante was off to join the fight upstairs, leaving Nero to wonder why it had been so important to ask, and why he felt so relieved at the answer._

* * *

The alarm clock rang, and Nero slapped it into silence without opening his eyes. The image of that first joint hunt had been playing behind his eyelids since he’d ascended from full dreaming to light doze early that morning, and though he didn’t know what had summoned that particular memory to the surface, he felt it was important, somehow. Perhaps he could divine its meaning if he could just think through it once more…

Beside him, Kyrie stirred. “Time to get up?” she asked through a yawn.

“Unless you wanna sleep in.” Nero threw an arm over her and nestled closer. “I got nowhere to be.”

She gave a contented hum, but patted his arm. “Unfortunately, our baby birds will be waiting at the table with open beaks, and today is a school day.”

Nero grunted as she slipped out of his grasp and pulled on a dressing gown. “We should teach those kids to fix their own breakfast.”

“We tried that once, remember?” Kyrie yawned again. “Kyle fell off a chair trying to get the cereal box from the cupboard. I’m still sweeping corn flakes out from under the oven.” She paused by the window to peer into the crib. “Can you change the twins while I wash up?”

Nero reluctantly rolled out of bed and collected two cloth diapers from the stack Kyrie had borrowed from the orphanage. The boys were only just squirming awake, and he would have to hurry to change them before they recognized the discomfort of a full diaper and begin complaining about it. It was too early in the morning to deal with a squalling baby. Or two.

Zaffiro’s eyes were open, so Nero picked him up first. “How ya doing, kiddo?” he murmured as he laid him on the towel Kyrie had spread across the top of their narrow dresser as a makeshift changing table. “Man, this is weird. If you _do_ turn out to be my old man, let’s never talk about that time I had to wipe your stinky little ass.”

Zaffiro blinked up at him with sharp blue eyes, and Nero felt a tickle in the back of his mind as though something had _reached_ for him. He froze, staring back at the baby. “Did you just…”

Zaffiro’s head oriented suddenly toward the crib. Nero glanced in the mirror over the dresser and saw Rosso beginning to stir behind him. A moment later the child gave a little cry of distress and pulled himself up on the edge of the crib to seek out his brother.

Nero sucked in a breath. Dante had told him that he and Vergil had always been able to sense each other. Was this why the twins hated being separated? Was this why they seemed to perk up whenever Nero entered the room? If they could sense Nero’s presence as well, as Dante had said…

Rosso plopped back on his full diaper and began to emit a slow wail of discomfort, so Nero hurried through Zaffiro’s change and switched babies. Rosso calmed down once Nero had picked him up, though his gaze remained fixed on Zaffiro the entire time he was on the dresser.

Just as Nero finished folding the clean diaper around Rosso’s legs, Kyrie returned to their room to dress. She paused to peer over his shoulder. “You’re very good at that.”

“Trial by fire at the orphanage.” Nero slipped his fingers behind the layers of fabric as a barrier before fixing the diaper in place with a safety pin. “The first time I changed a diaper, I accidentally pinned the diaper _to_ the baby. After that, I had some intensive training on correct changing procedure.” He scooped up Rosso to allow Kyrie access to the dresser.

Kyrie laughed and shed the robe before hunting through her drawer. “It’s a little chilly this morning, isn’t it? I wonder if they’ll be too cold up here.”

Nero replaced Rosso in the crib. “They do seem to sleep close together. They’re probably keeping each other warm.”

“Still, maybe I should give them some blankets tonight.” She hesitated. “Wait—when is it safe for babies to have a blanket?”

“No idea. I bet Sister Benedicta could tell you. Pretty sure that woman knows everything there is to know about children. She’s cared for hundreds of kids.”

Kyrie nodded. “I’ll call the orphanage after breakfast and ask.” She slipped a sweater on over her blouse. “I’ll see if the other children are up yet. If they’re still in bed, I can get the babies’ food ready and feed them before I make breakfast for the rest of us. They’ll be hungry, and I don’t want them downstairs until we know more about… what they’re capable of.”

Nero nodded. It was going to be difficult to manage keeping the babies separate from the other children, and he knew the twins were going to grow bored with this room sooner or later. He could only hope that Lady and Trish could help them find some answers.

* * *

Trish and Lady arrived in late afternoon, by which time the tantalizing scent of Kyrie’s homemade pasta sauce was beginning to fill the house. Nero had spent the time after lunch hauling boxes of books out to the garage to clear enough space for four adults to sit in the living room, though he left the pile that Nico thought she’d found the likely demon listed in and shoved several more boxes behind the furniture.

Immediately upon entering the house, Lady sank onto the newly-cleared sofa and stretched her limbs. “Oh, it feels good to sit,” she groaned.

Nero propped a hip on the far arm of the sofa. “Haven’t you been sitting all the way here?”

Lady opened one eye to glare at him. “I was winding through mountain roads on a motorcycle for six hours this morning. That’s less ‘sitting’ and more ‘full-body steering.’ And the ferry crossing was so choppy, I had to stay with the bike the whole time to keep it upright. I never even made it to the passenger deck.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” Nero said quickly. “Dinner will be ready in a little bit.”

“It smells good,” Trish noted, nostrils flaring as she scented the air like a predator. “Is that some kind of pizza sauce?”

Nero bit back a grin at Lady’s eyeroll. “Same basic ingredients. Kyrie’s making lasagna.”

As though summoned, Kyrie appeared then, wiping her hands on her apron. “Oh, hello! I thought I heard the door.” She held out a hand to Lady. “It’s nice to see you again. We met once before. I’m Kyrie.”

“Lady.” She clasped Kyrie’s hand before pointing to her companion, who was draping herself across the recliner. “And that’s Trish.”

“We’ve met, too. A few times.” Trish flashed her teeth. “Though I looked a little different back then.” She snapped her fingers, and Gloria’s image flickered over her body like a projection and vanished a second later.

Kyrie flushed a little. Nero knew she’d never been quite comfortable with Gloria’s place in the Order—nor her mode of dress, which was scandalous by Order standards. Well—by _most_ standards, he supposed. “Yes, that’s right. Nice to see you again, Trish. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

Trish shrugged. “A few years. You’re looking well. Better than the rest of Fortuna, I dare say.”

“With the Order gone, it’s been a struggle to rebuild.” Kyrie clasped her hands the way she always did whenever the organization’s collapse came up in conversation. “We spent a long time just trying to clear the rubble. Things were in pretty terrible shape after—well. The last time you were here.”

“I’d apologize for that, but if I’m honest… Not really sorry. The Order needed to go.”

“Oh, I don’t disagree.” She smiled sadly. “I just wish it hadn’t taken so much of the town with it. Most of the people here weren’t involved with the High Council’s schemes. It’s always a tragedy when innocents suffer for the actions of a few bad people.”

“Or a few demons, as the case may be.” Trish flicked an eyebrow and turned back to Nero. “Speaking of which, where are these miniature humans we’re supposed to look at?”

“Upstairs. Do you want to see them now?”

“Might as well,” Lady said. “Otherwise, I’m liable to abscond with that entire lasagna. It smells wonderful.” She flashed a smile at Kyrie before standing. “Lead the way.”

They trooped upstairs in a line, Nero at the fore. “Just let me see if they’re sleeping.” He opened the door a crack and peered in. Zaffiro was staring out the window, while Rosso was diligently putting tooth marks in a large wooden block Nero had given him to play with after lunch. Their heads swiveled immediately to focus on the group at the door. “They’re awake,” he said. “Come on in.”

Kyrie and Lady were the next to enter, with Trish bringing up the rear. The moment she stepped into view, both boys’ eyes snapped to her. In an instant the twins were pulling themselves to their feet by the crib rails and holding out their arms. “Mama!” they chorused together. “ _Mama!_ ”

Trish’s eyes widened, and she backed toward the door. “Oh, no. No, no, no.”

“What?” Lady’s head turned from the crib to Trish and back again. “Do you sense something? What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” Trish jabbed a finger at the crib. “Aren’t you listening? They think I’m their _mother_ , that’s what’s wrong!”

“Huh. Interesting.” Lady tapped a finger to her lips. “Kyrie, have they ever called you that?”

Kyrie shook her head. “I’ve never even heard them speak before. Nero said one of them said a couple of words yesterday, while looking at a picture, but that’s the first time.”

The twins were growing more insistent, their cries edging toward wails. Nero tried to calm them, but for once they wanted nothing to do with him, instead craning to look around him at Trish.

Lady raised her voice to be heard over the clamor. “So they aren’t just calling any woman they see ‘mama’—it’s something about you in particular, Trish. You must look like their mother.”

“Of course I look like their mother,” Trish scowled. “Haven’t you seen that picture on Dante’s desk?”

All three adults rotated to stare at her. “You mean—it’s really them?” Nero burst. “You’re sure?”

Trish shrugged. “Well, I can’t be positive, but there aren’t _that_ many human-demon hybrids in the world. In fact, the grand total I know of comes to three, counting Nero here.”

Lady’s eyebrows rose. “You’re sure they’re hybrids?”

“Of course. I can sense that much.” Trish edged closer to the crib, staying just out of reach of the groping baby hands. “Oh. Yes. This one’s Dante, that one’s Vergil.”

She’d confirmed Nero’s own guess as to which child was which. “How can you tell?”

“Because that one looks more pathetic, and Vergil always was a mama’s boy.” Trish crossed her arms and scowled at the crib’s occupants. “No, I’m not picking you up.”

“Mama!” wailed Zaffiro, on the verge of tears. It was followed by another sound that might have been a plaintive, “Up!”

“I am _not_ your mother. Don’t you dare snivel at me. Devils may cry, but they _never_ snivel.” Trish frowned and glanced at Kyrie. “Do they even understand words at this age?”

“Only a few,” Kyrie answered. “But I think it really would be best if you held them, just for a moment. They really do seem to think you’re their mother.”

“No chance in—or out of—hell.” Trish put more distance between herself and the crib. “You know what most devils do with human children? It starts with L and rhymes with ‘munch.’”

Lady rolled her eyes. “The only thing you ever have for lunch is pizza. Besides, it’s Dante and Vergil. You _live_ with them. Would it kill you to interact with them for a minute?”

Trish growled low in her throat, but inched toward the crib again. She reluctantly extended a hand to each baby and grimaced when her fingers were engulfed in each child’s moist grasp. “ _Ugh_. That is vile.” She twisted her hands free and held them well away from her body. As soon as she broke their grasp, both children began to cry and reach for her again.

“Wipes are on the dresser behind you,” Nero told her as he tried unsuccessfully to distract Rosso with the block. “Not the maternal type, huh?”

“I may _look_ like their mother, but that’s where the resemblance stops.” Trish scrubbed at her fingers with a handful of wipes. “If you need me, I’ll be downstairs, picking out a completely new physical form to use for the duration.”

She vanished through the bedroom door. Kyrie sighed and scooped up Zaffiro, who was sobbing in earnest now. “Don’t cry, little one.” She paused and stared pensively at the child in her arms. “Nero…”

Nero glanced over from where he’d picked up Rosso, who was teetering on the brink of his own meltdown. “Yeah?”

“I’ve never met Vergil.” Zaffiro chose that moment to plop his head down on Kyrie’s shoulder, and she turned to Nero, eyes wide with shock. “This is the first time I’ve actually met your father, and I…”

Nero bounced Rosso— _Dante_ , he realized suddenly, Trish had confirmed it—in his arms. “It’s okay. I, uh, think he likes you.”

“But I… I changed his diaper!” Kyrie cried. “How am I ever going to face him now?”

There was silence in the room for a few seconds, and then Lady burst out laughing. “Sorry! I’m sorry,” she choked out. “But the look on your face…”

Nero couldn’t help chuckling along with her, and a moment later Kyrie joined them with a restrained giggle. The strange tension that had settled over the room dissolved. “It’ll be okay, Kyrie,” Nero promised. Strangely, all his fears from the previous day seemed to vanish in the realization that he’d found his family at last. “I don’t know how, but everything is gonna be okay.”


	8. Chapter 8

By the time they had calmed the twins and made their way back downstairs, Trish had been cornered in the living room by the full complement of children, who had just returned from their after-school activities at the orphanage. They were gaping at her in open astonishment, and Nero groaned inwardly. Fortuna’s population tended to dress conservatively even outside of the Order’s adherents, so it was doubtful if the boys had ever seen so much skin showing on a live woman before. The fact that Nero knew Trish wasn’t actually human didn’t change the boggle-eyed expression on Julio’s face, nor the questions he was sure to have to field later from the younger boys.

The kids were so distracted by the mysterious woman in their house that they didn’t notice Nero entering behind them, which gave him a chance to gesture frantically at Trish to cover herself up. She stared at him blankly for a moment before Lady, taking his meaning, pointed to her own bosom and zipped her jacket meaningfully. Trish’s mouth formed a silent “oh” of understanding.

“Kids!” Nero barked. They startled and whirled to face him, and Trish waved a hand over her torso. Light flickered over her skin, and when it faded she was wearing a stylish leather jacket with a metallic lightning bolt down one sleeve. It was belted at the waist and didn’t entirely conceal her open-front bustier, but at least it made her seem more fully clothed. Belatedly, he realized five children were still staring at him expectantly. “Hurry and wash up for supper. Kyrie’s made her world-famous lasagna, and we don’t want it to get cold!”

The children pelted down the hall toward the single bathroom, squabbling over who got to use the sink first, and Nero breathed a sigh of relief. “Yeah, I probably should have mentioned that before. You remember what people here dress like.”

“A lot of hoods and robes, from what I remember.” Trish dropped into a chair with a frown. “But nobody seemed to mind how I dressed as Gloria.”

“Uh, a _lot_ of people minded how you dressed as Gloria.”

“Really? The men of the High Council rather seemed to enjoy it.”

“That’s because they were the _men_ of the High Council,” Nero muttered. “Anyway, the kids aren’t used to seeing that sort of thing.”

Trish arched an eyebrow. “What sort of thing? Skin? Do they not have any?”

“Trish,” Lady warned.

“Right. Because you’re so modest and retiring, yourself.” Trish looked meaningfully at Lady’s outfit. Bare thighs were on display between the top of her motorcycle chaps and her micro-shorts, and Nero had never seen Lady wear a top that actually concealed her décolletage.

“Don’t make this about me.” Lady’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “As a matter of fact, I have a question for _you_.”

“Fashion tips?”

“More like parenting advice.”

Trish’s expression flickered into something studiously neutral, and she examined a fingernail. “Not my department. Babies aren’t a thing in the underworld.” She reconsidered. “Well. Not like _that_ , anyway. Obviously, demons do reproduce.”

Lady seemed about to say something else, but just then Kyrie stepped out of the kitchen. “Dinner’s ready!” she called.

The children tumbled back down the hall, and Lady shot Trish a look. “We’ll save this for later.”

* * *

Kyrie’s lasagna was as good as promised, and before long the pan had been scraped clean. Even Trish had a second helping, which was a testament to Kyrie’s prowess in the kitchen; Nero had never seen Trish consume anything that wasn’t round, flat, and delivered in a cardboard box.

After the dishes had been washed, Nero and Kyrie helped the older boys with their homework while the younger ones played. Lady dozed on the sofa, still drained from her long bike ride, and Trish claimed to need some air and slipped out for a walk—though Nero noticed she was heading in the direction of the castle, and knew she was going to hunt up a Scarecrow or two for some target practice. She returned just after dusk, looking pleased with herself.

A little earlier than the usual bedtime, Kyrie rounded up the children and ushered them down the hall toward the larger bedroom they’d converted into a makeshift dormitory with sets of bunk beds. “I’ll give you three some space to talk,” she murmured to Nero. “All right, children! Everyone get ready for bed, and then I’ll read you all a story.”

Lady waited until the bedroom door was closed behind them before fixing Trish with a hard look. “Okay, you got a reprieve earlier, but the kids are in bed now and it’s just us grown-ups. Spill.”

Trish raised her eyebrows. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“I mean it’s time to come clean. What was all that nonsense upstairs _really_ about?”

Trish moved to stare out the window at the streetlamps, cool as ever. “All what nonsense?”

“That bit with Dante and Vergil. Pretending not to want to go near them. And don’t tell me it’s because they drooled on your hand. You hunt demons every day. I’ve seen you get splattered with blood, guts, saliva, and God only knows what else. Hell, I once watched you jump into a Gorgeron’s mouth and take it apart from the inside, and you just shook the viscera out of your hair afterward. A little thing like spit has never bothered you until today.”

Trish shrugged. “I draw the line at runny baby snot.”

“Bullshit.”

For a full minute, the silence in the room was broken only by the ticking of the old clock. Trish never moved, and Lady’s posture remained rigid and unyielding.

“Trish,” Nero said, “if you know something about what happened to them…”

“It’s not like that.”

“Then tell us what it is like,” Lady snapped. “If that’s _really_ Dante up there, and he’s somehow been reduced to a little kid, you’d better have a damn good reason for letting him suffer and work himself up like that, when all you had to do was go to him to calm him down. And if it’s not Dante, you’d better have an even _better_ reason for lying to us.”

The silence stretched on a little longer, but at last Trish capitulated with a sigh. “I knew Vergil.” Her voice was unusually subdued. “Before.”

Nero glanced at Lady and saw his confusion mirrored on her face. “Before what?”

Trish folded her arms. “Before Dante killed him.”

The words slammed into Nero’s chest and froze the breath in his lungs. Nico had mentioned something like that, but he’d taken it for hyperbole. It was jarring to hear it stated as fact from Dante’s partner.

“You mean… when he was Nero Angelo?” Lady asked.

Nero’s head snapped toward her at the sound of his own name. “When he was _what?_ ”

“Later.” Lady kept her eyes fixed on Trish. “First I want to hear what she has to say.”

Trish didn’t wear defeat well. “Tell him now. I’m not going anywhere.”

Lady sighed and gave Nero a searching look. “I suppose you’re bound to find out sooner or later. When I first met Dante and Vergil, they were—well, to be honest, they were a couple of teenage idiots with more power than sense. Vergil was trying to unleash hell on earth, and Dante stopped him. Rather than admit defeat, Vergil threw himself into the underworld. We thought he was gone for good; back then it wasn’t so easy to travel between the realms.”

Nero’s eyebrows crept higher. “It’s _easy_ now?”

“Comparatively. In those days, it required powerful artifacts and a blood sacrifice to unlock the arcane seals that kept the underworld from breaking through. Nowadays, enough of the seals have been destroyed that any idiot with a summoning circle can open a portal. A lot of that was Vergil’s doing.”

“Why does that not surprise me,” Nero muttered.

“He definitely made some… questionable choices back then.” Lady shook her head at some memory. “Anyway, some years after all that happened, Dante went to take down a demon lord who was trying to invade the human world. He ended up facing that demon’s champion, Nero Angelo. Only after he’d killed him, he found out Nero Angelo was really Vergil. He’d been… corrupted. Brainwashed, or something. Dante hadn’t recognized him.” She wrapped her arms around herself, her gaze distant. “When he’d realized he’d killed his own brother… Well, it really messed him up for a while.”

“Shit,” Nero breathed. “I didn’t know any of that.”

“Dante doesn’t talk about it. I only know because we were more or less drinking buddies at the time, and I was the only person he knew who had actually met Vergil. He had to unload on somebody.” Her gaze dropped to the floor. “And he knew I’d understand what he was going through,” she added under her breath.

“There’s a bit more to the story.” Trish finally turned toward them and eyed Nero. “How much do you know about the legend of Sparda?”

He let out a wry laugh. “I grew up here; I got the Order’s version of it read to me every week. Sparda turned against his own kind and saved humanity, yadda yadda.”

Trish nodded. “That much is true. Sparda was a powerful general serving Mundus, a prince of the underworld. When Mundus tried to invade the human realm, Sparda rebelled, and sealed Mundus away to protect humanity. The seals held for a couple thousand years, but eventually Mundus regained enough power to retaliate. His troops carved a bloody swath through Red Grave City and murdered Sparda’s human wife, Eva. His sons were forced into hiding, hunted by Mundus’s minions.”

That was more detail than the Order had included in their doctrine. Nero tried to swallow, but his mouth had gone dry. “How long ago was this?”

Trish’s eyes softened as she perceived his true question. “They were eight years old.”

“Shit.” Nero tried to remember what he’d been like at the age of eight. He thought of Carlo, who had just turned nine, and tried to imagine him running for his life from the forces of the underworld. The image wouldn’t even manifest in his mind.

Trish leaned her elbows on the back of the armchair. “Mundus didn’t like leaving things unfinished, so after regaining his power, he prepared to invade the human realm again. The only thing he lacked was a new general—one who could replace the traitor, Sparda. Then, like an offering, Sparda’s firstborn son drops into the underworld and tries to pick a fight with the demon responsible for killing his mother.”

Lady shook her head slowly. “Of course he would. And he lost.”

Trish nodded. “Rather than kill him, Mundus decided the most poetic revenge would be to turn Sparda’s son into his new champion. The only problem was the actual _turning_. Vergil’s mind was strong. Mundus tortured him every way he knew how, brought him to the brink of death again and again, but his will just wouldn’t break.”

Nero flinched at the word _torture_. His father’s aggression and warped personality were beginning to make more sense.

“Mundus surmised—correctly—that the only thing that could slip past Vergil’s defenses was the thing most precious to his heart, the thing he had come to seek revenge for in the first place.”

Comprehension bloomed suddenly over Lady’s face, and she stared at Trish with new understanding. “Eva.”

Trish nodded. “Mundus mined Vergil’s own memory and fashioned a replica of his mother, just as he remembered her. He gave this creature the mind of a devil and the face of an angel—so far as Vergil was concerned. And that copy, that—that _puppet_ , pretended to be his mother. Went to him, comforted him, called him her son, gained his trust when he was at his weakest. _Manipulated_ him, for the sole purpose of breaking his will and handing him over to Mundus.” Trish’s lips curled in a sneer. “She did her work very efficiently. There came a moment when all the fight went out of him, like a candle snuffed out, and Mundus _praised_ her for it. Rewarded her with her own power.” Trish flexed her fingers, and a spark of electricity flashed at their tips. “Thus Nero Angelo was born.”

“So you weren’t intended for Dante at all.” Lady was still staring at Trish in wonder. “I always thought you were created to bait _him_ into a trap.”

“That, too, but only as an afterthought. Once Mundus had his champion, he realized that the only thing that might stand in his way was Sparda’s other son. He thought if Dante proved as strong as Vergil, his conquest of the human realm might be delayed.” Her smile was wry. “Fortunately for humanity, Dante proved even stronger. After being sealed away for so long, I don’t think Mundus quite understood the flow of time, nor how humans gain experience with age. By the time I was sent to bring him to Mundus, Dante had far surpassed Vergil’s power.”

It took Nero a moment to find his voice. “But I don’t understand why… If you were… ” He faltered on the question.

“If I worked for Mundus, how did I become Dante’s partner?” Nero nodded, and Trish shrugged. “Apparently Mundus made me a little _too_ well. He copied Vergil’s memories in every detail—down to Eva’s very human heart.” She looked down at her hands and slowly folded them. “After I… betrayed him, Dante showed me mercy. Kindness, even. That awakened something in me that Mundus didn’t anticipate. I realized I didn’t want to be a pawn, a mere weapon used to hurt the people I was just starting to care about, so I chose to help Dante defeat Mundus. Then I came back to the human world with him. Decided to stick around and keep putting down demons.”

“So you made the same choice Sparda did.”

Trish’s eyes widened. “Huh. I never thought of it that way.” She gave a soft laugh. “Maybe I got more from Vergil’s memories than just _Eva_ _’s_ likeness.”

“And that brings us full circle.” Lady raised her eyebrows at Trish. “You were going to tell us about what was going on upstairs.”

Trish’s smile vanished. “It’s related to the story I just told you.”

Lady leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Go on.”

Trish sighed. “You know what Dante was like after he killed Nero Angelo. Once the high of victory wore off, when he realized what he’d done, he just… fell apart. It took him years to get over that, if he ever did. He blamed himself for not recognizing Vergil, but there was no way he could, once I’d broken him and given him to Mundus. His brother had been all but erased, and it was my doing.”

“It was _Mundus_ _’s_ doing,” Lady corrected.

“With my full collaboration,” Trish countered. “I saw the damage I did to Vergil, and what that in turn did to Dante, and I promised myself that I would never, _ever_ manipulate someone like that again. That’s why I can’t go to those children. I can’t pretend to be their mother.”

Lady frowned. “We weren’t suggesting you _manipulate_ them, just… comfort them a little.”

“Weren’t you?” Trish’s eyes narrowed. “Those boys think they see their mother in me, but Eva died decades ago, and she’s not coming back. I won’t lie to them and give them false hope. Because even if I pretended for them, even if they’re too young right now to know the difference, one day, they’d realize the truth, and it would shatter them all over again.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “You have no idea what losing her did to them. I do; I saw Vergil’s memories. His nightmares.” She looked away. “I sometimes wish I hadn’t.”

Lady nodded slowly, her eyes clouded in memory, and Nero wondered if she understood better than Trish realized.

* * *

Kyrie was sitting up in bed, going over her agenda for the week, when Nero finally made it upstairs. “Did you get them both settled in for the night?”

“Lady’s sleeping on the couch. I was going to put her in Maria’s bed, but we didn’t want to wake Flavia.”

“What about Trish?”

“Trish doesn’t sleep. She went out.”

Kyrie blinked at that. “Where will she go at this time of night?”

“I don’t know. At Dante’s, she hangs out on the roof and keeps watch, or at least that’s what she says she does at night. For all I know, she’s out stealing street signs or knocking over garbage cans.” He yawned, exhausted by the stress and emotional toll of the day. “I’m sure she’ll be back in time for breakfast. She wouldn’t miss another chance to eat your cooking.”

Kyrie set aside her calendar. “Did you make any plans for the boys?”

Nero shook his head. “We didn’t get that far. Had to hash out some history first. At least we know it’s them, now, so Lady can stop _looking_ for them and focus on trying to figure out how to get them back to normal.” He went to the crib to find both babies snuggled beneath a familiar patchwork of blue, red and black squares. “Hey, this quilt…”

“Sister Benedicta said since they were over a year old and could already crawl, it was safe for them to have a blanket.”

“Yeah, but _this_ one. Is it…?”

Kyrie nodded. “It’s yours. I found it packed away in the linen cupboard.”

Nero touched one of the black fabric squares, soft with age, and felt a squeeze in his chest. Kyrie’s mother had made it as a gift for Nero after he’d gone to live at the orphanage. The black squares were all that remained of the blanket he’d been wrapped in when someone—perhaps his own mother—had left him on the doorstep of one of the Order’s most respected knights. “I guess it’s only fitting,” he said softly. “It’s the only link I ever had to where I came from. I used to wrap up in it at night and hope it could somehow tell me who my parents were, maybe in a dream. I never dreamed up my parents, but I always slept more peacefully when I had it.” He moved his hand to brush the cheek of the child in blue. “Vergil is one of those missing pieces I was always searching for. After what I’ve learned tonight, I’m betting he could use some peaceful dreams.”

Something V had once said to him—buried in memory, because he’d had no context for it at the time, and because he had been preoccupied with keeping the other man on his feet—snapped abruptly to his mind’s fore: _The truth is, I wanted to be protected and loved_ , _but I was alone_. _My only choice was to survive._ Vergil had tried to tell him then—tried to explain what had gone wrong in his life, why he’d made the choices he had. It was a confession, of sorts. Now that Nero understood the circumstances, the enormity of that admission closed his throat.

Kyrie had slipped out of bed to stand next to him, and when Nero glanced over at her he found her gazing at him with concern. “Nero, is something wrong?”

He couldn’t quite manage words, so he just dropped his head to rest on her shoulder. She quietly wrapped her arms around him, and he felt a surge of gratitude that she implicitly understood the need for comfort without demanding to know why it was necessary. It was one of the things he’d always loved about her. Gradually the band constricting his airway loosened. “What if this is meant to be a second chance?” he murmured.

She turned her face toward him. “A second chance for what?”

“For them. For a normal life.” He straightened and looked down at the twins, sound asleep and taking comfort in each other’s company. “Trish told me some things tonight, about them. About how they grew up, and everything that happened to them. It was…” He shook his head, seeking a way to express the horror and nausea he’d felt upon learning what Mundus had done, but words failed him. “Pure hell. Literally, in Vergil’s case. I mean, I don’t know if there’s any way to undo this, but even if we can’t turn them back the way they were, maybe… maybe that’s not so bad, for them. Maybe they deserve a chance to grow up like normal kids, not… not suffering, and being afraid, and always fighting each other because of things they had no control over.”

The furrows in Kyrie’s brow showed that she didn’t understand, but she didn’t question his need to express the thought. She moved her hands to frame his face. “Whatever happens, you know we will do the best we can for them. Whether that’s restoring them to the way they were, or…” There was a flicker of hesitation, but she pressed through it. “Or raising them as our own—whatever they need, we’ll provide. They’re your family, and that makes them mine, too.”

Nero’s throat closed again, but this time the feeling was accompanied by a flood of warmth in his chest. He folded Kyrie in his arms and thanked whatever powers existed in the universe that they’d allowed him to be found by the kindest and most selfless person in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The jacket Trish is wearing is the one from her unused concept design in the _Devil May Cry Graphic Edition_ artbook, published 2001. You can see a scan [here](https://www.creativeuncut.com/gallery-08/dmc-trish1.html).
> 
> I went with the Nero Angelo spelling in part because “Nelo” is a known transliteration error, but mostly because I wanted to set up certain parallels between Nero and his father. And to be honest, “Black Angel” is a much cooler name than… er, Nelo. I don’t know why they didn’t just correct the spelling error when the original game was rereleased.


	9. Chapter 9

Kyrie fiddled with the knob on the side of the appliance, sighed, and pulled the plug from its socket. “Nero, the toaster is jammed again. Could you…?”

“On it.” Nero left the carton of milk on the kitchen table and reached across the counter for a serving fork, which he jammed into the bread slot with the casual precision of long practice. After several seconds of wiggling, the lever came free with a dull _ping_ of strained metal, and a charred slab of bread crumbled onto the countertop.

Nero examined the damage to the mechanism. “I think this spring has sprung its last.”

Kyrie’s shoulders slumped. “I suppose it was only a matter of time. That toaster is as old as I am. Any chance it can be repaired?”

“Maybe.” He shook the rest of the burned bread out over the garbage can. “These older appliances are usually pretty straightforward. I’ll ask Nico if she has any parts that will fit.”

Kyrie nodded and went back to portioning sliced fruit onto a half-dozen breakfast plates. Nero hated the quiet resignation she had been forced to adopt in the face of each new setback, but he knew as well as she did that they didn’t have the money for even something as simple as a new toaster just now. If things were different—if he had a little more work, if they had fewer mouths to feed, if fuel and ammunition weren’t so expensive on this remote island—he’d shower her with everything she could ever want.

“Breakfast!” Kyrie called, and a moment later the kitchen was a flurry of activity as a pack of children scrambled into the kitchen and found their places at the table. Flavia stood by her seat a moment, still struggling with the buttons of her uniform jacket, and Nero bent to help her.

“Hey, you’re getting to be a pretty big girl now,” Nero commented as he pulled the jacket front together. It barely closed. “You’re gonna need the next size up, pretty soon. Stop growing so fast!” He grinned and ruffled her copper-colored hair.

Kyrie beamed as she set down Flavia’s plate. “That’s good news! The doctor said she needed to gain.”

“Nobody can stay underweight eating Kyrie’s cooking.” Nero helped Flavia into her makeshift booster seat. The petite four-year-old was too short to reach the table comfortably, so Nero had taped a couple of old telephone directories to the chair seat. “Should I go wake Lady?”

“Lady’s up,” came a voice from the doorway, distorted through a yawn. Lady slouched against the doorframe and ran a hand through her unkempt bangs. “Is the bathroom available for a few minutes? I’d like to get cleaned up before breakfast.”

“Go ahead. The kids will be off to school as soon as they eat.” Lady vanished down the hall, and Nero accepted the plate Kyrie offered him. He leaned back against the counter to eat—his usual place for meals, ever since taking on the extra children. There was barely room for six chairs at the table, and until recently Maria had occupied the last one. “Kyrie, you can sit and eat if you want.”

Kyrie shook her head and continued chopping fruit. “I’ll wait. I don’t want Lady to have to eat alone. Besides, I need to get the boys’ breakfast ready.”

Carlo looked up from his plate. “Why don’t Rosso and Zaffiro eat with us?”

“Because they’re too little,” Kyrie explained patiently. “They need special food, and they can’t sit at the table like you can.”

“Can I help feed them?” Flavia asked. “I practice with my doll.”

Kyrie hesitated. Nero knew that Flavia had been curious about the twins ever since they’d arrived; Kyrie had told him that the little girl had asked repeatedly to see or hold them. But they had agreed to keep them separated from the other children, and they hadn’t had a chance to talk about what form that separation would take. “We’ll have to wait and see,” Kyrie said at last. “They’ve been through a lot, so we don’t want to change their routine too much at first.”

Flavia seemed to accept this, and the chatter around the table soon turned to school and sports. “I want to try out for the summer football team,” Julio said suddenly. “You have to be thirteen to play, but I asked the coach, and he said it’s okay to try out this year since I’ll turn thirteen before the season starts.”

Nero’s first thought was how much that would cost—new shoes and cleats, shin guards, shorts, jersey, and whatever other equipment was required. He was just about to say something to discourage Julio’s interest when Kyrie said, “That sounds like a wonderful idea! What position do you want to play?”

“I want to try for goalkeeper.” Julio radiated enthusiasm. “I’ve been practicing at the park.”

Guilt stabbed through Nero. He had no business suppressing Julio’s hopes and dreams for such a banal reason as money. Hope of _any_ kind was in short supply on Fortuna, and they had to foster it where they could. “We’ll have to get a proper ball, then, so you can keep practicing. Ours isn’t regulation size.”

“Maybe I can borrow one from the school. I’ll ask the coach today.” Julio looked down at his plate, then glanced tentatively back up at Nero. “I… I asked if we had to buy our own equipment, and he said he might have some old things I could borrow at first. I know it’s expensive.” The last words were nearly a whisper.

Nero’s stomach sank at how their concerns over money had apparently bled over to the children. “Hey, don’t worry about that. If this is really something you want to do, we’ll figure it out.”

Lady had reappeared in the doorway while they were speaking, and she glanced between them. “Sports equipment? It’s a racket. They charge you an arm and a leg for something most kids use for one, maybe two seasons. _Always_ buy used if you can. It’s a lot cheaper that way.”

Nero shook his head. “Not a lot of used _anything_ available around here. Stuff like that is always a special import.”

“There’s a ton of resale shops on the mainland. I bet I could find most of what you need for half price, at least.” She flashed a grin. “And with me bargaining for it, I could probably outfit your whole team for a fraction of the cost. I can _always_ get the best price.”

“Did you ever play any sports, Lady?” Kyrie asked.

Lady shrugged. “I guess that depends on how you define ‘sport.’ My thing was gymnastics. I was pretty good, too. National finalist when I was sixteen.”

There was a chorus of impressed noises from around the table. “You could have been in the Olympics!” said Carlo, whose school class had recently learned about the international competition.

Lady laughed. “I don’t know if I was _that_ good. Besides, I gave it up not long after that.” Her smile turned brittle. “Around that time I had another goal to focus on.”

Nero recognized that look; he’d seen it on Dante’s face more than once, usually whenever a conversation steered too close to his early life. He diverted the conversation before Lady could be asked anything uncomfortable. “Hey, you kids better scoot, or you’ll be late to school.”

There was a flurry of activity as the children abandoned the table, jostled for the lunch sacks Kyrie had set out on the counter, and clustered at the front door to pull on shoes and coats. Nero saw them on their way, then returned to the kitchen. Lady was clearing the table as Kyrie plated two more breakfasts. Nero hurried forward to collect some flatware. “Hey, I can do that. Have a seat.”

Lady rolled her eyes. “Come on, you’re putting me up here. At least let me help out a little.”

“Nero’s right,” Kyrie cut in. “You’re our guest—”

The friendly argument was interrupted by the sound of an angry wail over their heads. Kyrie sighed and set the plates she was holding on the table. “Sounds like someone else wants breakfast. I didn’t have time to feed them earlier, but I’ll go do it now.” She began to remove her apron.

“ _Sit_ ,” Nero ordered, pulling out a chair for her. “Eat. Relax for two minutes. Let me deal with the Spardini.”

Lady nearly choked on her coffee. “ _Spardini?_ It sounds like some kind of canned pasta.”

“It means ‘little Spardas,’” Kyrie laughed. “I think it’s cute, if a bit… well, I don’t suppose it can be considered sacrilegious now that the Order is gone.”

There was another unhappy cry from upstairs, clashing with the first. “I’ll bring them down here to feed them. They could probably use a change of scenery.” Nero hurried upstairs, checked that the diapers he’d put on earlier in the morning were still dry, and tucked a baby into the crook of each arm. The trip down the stairs was awkward, and he struggled to set the twins down once he’d reached the kitchen. “Okay, these kids are _definitely_ heavier than they used to be. Is that normal?”

Kyrie lifted one of the boys and let out a surprised _oof_. “You’re right. I should weigh them again.” She frowned and fingered the hem of the red baby shirt she’d made for Rosso, which was stretched tight over his stomach. “And it looks as if they’re already outgrowing their clothes! That _can_ _’t_ be normal.”

“I’m not sure if there _is_ a normal, considering they’re only half human.” Nero balanced the twins on the kitchen counter, bracing his arms on either side so they couldn’t fall, and placed a bowl of diced fruit between them. Both boys plunged their hands into the slippery mess. “So. I guess we need to discuss what we do from here.”

Lady slathered jam on a slice of untoasted bread. “Well, first, there are the practical issues to consider. The rent on Dante’s shop is coming due. Trish says she can take enough jobs to cover it for the time being, but if she’s out working, she can’t be helping with this.” She gestured to encompass the babies.

“I had the impression she wasn’t interested in helping care for them,” Kyrie said. “She didn’t seem comfortable around small children.”

“It turns out that wasn’t the only reason,” Lady sighed. “But I meant helping in a more general sense—researching what we can do to restore them, for example. Or hunting down the demon that did this, which we still know nothing about.”

“Nico found something that might be helpful. A description of a demon that matches what I saw. It’s in one of those books in the front room, though it may take some digging to find it again.” Nero paused to laugh. “I think there’s more of that banana on your face than in your mouth, kid.”

The baby with Dante’s smile stared up at Nero, then extended his hand, now coated in yellow slime.

“Banana,” Nero said.

“Amma,” Dante repeated.

Nero chuckled. “Close enough.”

“You should be just glad his first word wasn’t ‘pizza,’” Lady said dryly.

“It’s only a matter of time.” Nero used a kitchen towel to wipe most of the fruit pulp and saliva from the boys’ faces and scooped Vergil up on one hip. Kyrie collected Dante and seated him in her lap at the table. Instantly, Dante reached for her steaming mug of coffee, and Nero whisked it out of reach before sitting beside her. Dante gave a squeal of indignation until Kyrie placated him with a slice of melon from her plate, which he promptly crammed into his mouth. “We’re gonna have to baby-proof this whole house, aren’t we,” Nero muttered.

“Only if we intend to let them have access to the whole house. And I really don’t think we should, until we know more. I think the best thing for now is to pretend nothing has changed—let the other children think Zaffiro and Rosso are still too delicate to visit with them. Until we can learn more about what they’re capable of at this age, I think it’s safest to keep them all separated.”

Nero frowned. “You want to keep calling them by those names?”

“The children have undoubtedly heard us mention Dante or Vergil in conversation at some point. I think it will be more confusing if we suddenly start calling the babies by those names.” Kyrie bounced Rosso lightly on her lap. “Once we learn whether it’s possible to restore these two to their proper ages, we can decide what to tell them.”

As one, Rosso and Zaffiro suddenly looked up, orienting their gazes toward the wall—and beyond it, Nero realized, the front door. He tensed as he heard the door open, but a moment later they heard Trish call a greeting to the house. “In the kitchen,” Lady called back.

Trish appeared in the doorway, still wearing her trademark bustier and the leather jacket, but now with a bright red pageboy cut instead of her usual flowing blonde hair. Her skin was a deep tan, and heavy cosmetics shaded her eyes. She hesitated when she saw the twins, but while they stared intently, they did not reach for her as they had the previous day. “Well, it seems my disguise is working.”

“You didn’t change the face,” Lady observed. “Seems like that would have guaranteed it.”

“That takes more energy. Small cosmetic changes are easier to maintain than shifting my physical form. Besides, adding bangs usually does the trick. Cover up the eyebrows, and it’s amazing how many people won’t recognize you.” Trish wandered past the remains of breakfast on the stove. “Is any of this food unclaimed?”

Kyrie shifted Rosso as though to get up to serve her, but Nero stopped her with a touch. “Help yourself. Plates are in the cupboard to your right.”

Trish scraped every dish clean as she piled the remaining food onto a plate, then joined them at the table. “So what’s our agenda for the day?”

“Research, for a start,” said Lady. “Nico found some information that might pertain to the demon we’re hunting.”

“I’d like to help you, but I have to spend some time at the orphanage today.” There was a note of apology in Kyrie’s voice. “It’s my day to staff the office.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’ve got your own work to do,” Nero reassured her. “With the three of us and Nico, we’ll have a full house as it is.”

“All right.” Kyrie stood and offered Rosso to Nero, who shuffled Zaffiro into his other arm to take him. “I’m sorry to leave as soon as you get here, Trish, but I need to get ready. The office normally opens at ten, but we have an early staff meeting this morning.”

“No worries. Thanks for breakfast.” As Kyrie left, Trish shoveled an entire slice of melon into her mouth, and Nero wondered if she had learned her table manners from Dante, or vice versa.

“If we’re going to look through the books, I’ll call Nico. She’s the only one who knows where that entry was.” Nero started to stand, then realized he didn’t have a hand free for the telephone. “Uh, can one of you take a kid?”

Trish showed both palms in a firm refusal, and Lady rolled her eyes. “Here, I’ll take him. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but if I can handle a dozen demonic monsters trying to kill me, I’m sure I can manage a baby for two minutes.”

Nero chuckled. “I’ve done both, and I’d take the demons any day.”

“Is now a bad time to point out that these kids are both babies _and_ demons?” Trish drawled.

“ _All_ babies are demons,” Nero retorted. “Some of them just grow out of it.”

He handed Zaffiro to Lady and was about to reach for the telephone when he heard the connecting door to the garage slam open. He recognized the pounding of boot heels on the hardwood and was not surprised when Nico slid to a stop in the doorway. “Hey, yo yo _yo!_ ” she shouted. “Who’s got two sets o’ finger-guns and just landed us a payin’ gig?” She pointed her index fingers at Nero and then jerked her hands up so the extended thumbs pointed back to herself. “Yours truly, that’s who! Just got the call. He wants us right away. Good money, too!”

“Sweet!” Nero grinned. “Boy, do I need some of that. Where is it?”

“Out by the old mines. Guy says there’s half a dozen demons hangin’ around out there. He’s tryin’ to show the property to a developer and wants ‘em gone, like, _yesterday_.”

Rosso took that moment to burp on Nero’s shoulder, and he froze. “Shit. I can’t leave the babies alone.” His eyes crept to Lady, who looked back at him warily. “Would you…”

“…Take this job for you so you can stay with the things in diapers? Absolutely. Because I don’t do diapers.” Lady handed Zaffiro back to Nero. The dismay he was feeling must have shown on his face, because Lady’s expression softened. “Look, just cover the cost of whatever ammunition I use, and you can keep your cut. Consider it my contribution to child care for these two idiots.”

Nero’s face burned at her charity, but he wasn’t in any position to refuse the offer. “Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

Trish bolted down the last few bites of her breakfast and stood. “I’ll come along. Who knows? There might be something worth fighting out there.”

“Fine by me. It’s probably good to have someone who can sense demons along, in case there’s anything big lurking down in the mines.”

Nico stared at Trish as though she’d only just noticed her. Spots of color appeared high in her cheeks. “Uh, hey, so is anybody gonna introduce me to the hot redhead?”

Trish unfurled a catlike smile, and Lady arched an eyebrow at her. “Bangs, huh? I’ll keep that in mind.”


	10. Chapter 10

It was afternoon when Nero heard Nico’s van rattle into the garage. He was stretched out on the sofa, a book tented over his face, while Rosso and Zaffiro napped heavily on his chest. He’d searched through all of two volumes before the twins had become living weights to pin him to the sofa, and they looked so peaceful asleep, he hadn’t had the heart to relocate them.

That, and they’d been so fractious for most of the day that he was afraid of what might happen if he woke them up. Let sleeping devils lie, and all that.

The garage door opened, and the hunting party filed into the living room, looking less than happy. Nero dropped the book on the floor beside the couch. “How’d it go?”

“It didn’t.” Lady sank into the armchair by the window. “There was nothing left when we got there.”

“Nothing left?” Nero glanced from her to Nico. “Of the client, or…?”

“The demons were gone. Killed by another hunter, according to the client. Someone beat us there.”

“Another hunter?” Nero struggled upright, wrapping his arms around the boys to keep them from tumbling to the floor. Zaffiro yawned, and Rosso squirmed in protest at the movement. “There _are_ no other hunters on Fortuna.”

“Yeah, that’s what I told the client, an’ he just said we should’a been faster if we wanted the job.” Nico’s expression was stormy. “I don’t know who this other hunter was or how they even found out about the gig, but if I ever find ‘em, I’m gonna have some strong words for ‘em. _Nobody_ snipes our pay an’ gets away with it.”

“Shit.” Nero _needed_ that money. And if another hunter really had come on the scene, that meant there would be even fewer paying jobs for him in the future. It was a lean enough field without professional competition. “So now what?”

Lady got to her feet. “I’m going to call Morrison, see if he knows who this other hunter is. If they’re here anyway, maybe they know something about that demon we’re looking for. We might as well use them as a resource, especially since they owe us one.” She glanced at the discarded book beside Nero. “Any luck with the research?”

Nero shook his head. “Babysitting interruptions. I didn’t make it very far.”

“Well, we can help you now that we’re back.” She smothered a yawn. “Damn, those kids have got me doing it now. I think I’ll make myself a cup of tea to wake up.”

Nero deposited the twins on the floor, checking to make sure there were no dangerous objects within reach, and gestured to the stack of matching volumes by the armchair. “Everyone grab a book, I guess.”

After describing the passage they were looking for to Trish, they browsed in silence for several minutes until Lady returned, tea in hand. She wiggled a finger in her ear. “The sound on that phone is _awful,_ Nero. Is it like that all over the island?”

“It’s never been great, but the interference has definitely gotten worse lately. I don’t know if it’s the line, or just our telephone. That thing’s older than dirt. Not like we can afford to replace it,” he added with a scowl. “Like everything else that keeps breaking around here.”

Lady hummed sympathetically. “I saw your toaster.”

“Yeah, that’s the latest casualty.” He glanced at Nico, who was pretending to read, but had perked up at Lady’s comment, obviously waiting to be asked for her expertise. He sighed as theatrically as he dared; it wouldn’t do to oversell it. “I think it may be beyond my skill to fix. I guess we’ll just have to save up for a new one.”

Nico took the bait. “It sure is a shame you don’t know anyone who’s a mechanical _genius_ ,” she said without lifting her eyes from the page.

Nero shook his head. “I don’t think the best engineer in the world could fix that thing. It’s in really bad shape.”

Nico huffed and slammed down the book. “Well I guess we’ll just see about that!” She stormed toward the kitchen. A few seconds later she reappeared, toaster tucked under one arm, and vanished into the garage.

Nero waited until the door had closed behind her before laughing. “Works every time.”

Trish arched her eyebrows. “What was all that about?”

“Every time I asked her to fix something, she gripes for a week about how I take advantage of her skills.” Nero shrugged. “But I never actually _asked_ her to fix the toaster. It was all _her_ idea.”

“I see.”

“So she’ll invest all of ten minutes fixing it, I’ll pretend to be completely floored by her brilliance, and she’ll preen for days because she could repair something I couldn’t. Meanwhile, we have a working toaster again. Everybody wins.”

Lady chuckled. “That’s remarkably calculating of you.”

“Well, he _is_ Vergil’s son,” Trish put in. “Vergil puts that kind of thing over on Dante all the time.”

“That doesn’t surprise me in the least.” Lady rolled her eyes. “Not that Vergil does it, nor that Dante falls for it.”

Both women laughed, but a strange melancholy gripped Nero, and his eyes fell on the two children exploring the floor. _He_ was surprised. In truth, he scarcely knew his father. The realization that he might never have guessed Zaffiro’s true identity had he not recognized Dante in Rosso was unsettling.

Trish tossed a book to Lady and collected another one for herself from the stack. “So what did Morrison say?”

“He hasn’t heard of any new hunters here, but he said Nero is really his only contact on Fortuna. He’s going to ask around, though.” Lady took Nico’s seat and opened the book. “So I guess we’re pretty much back where we started.”

Before Nero could reply, he heard the chatter of familiar voices approaching outside. He twisted to glance up at the console clock. “Shit. The kids are home.”

“Is that a problem?”

“Kyrie doesn’t want them mixing with Rosso and Zaffiro.” He bent to scoop the twins into his arms. They squealed in surprise at the sudden elevation change. “Be right back.” He hurried up the stairs and deposited the boys in their crib, but noticed as he set them down that Zaffiro needed a fresh diaper. He quickly cleaned and changed the baby, but in his haste he jabbed the safety pin into the pad of his finger. “Shit!” he hissed, squeezing the finger before dabbing the dot of blood off on a baby wipe. “Well, at least it was me and not you, kiddo.”

Rosso, as always, was watching attentively. As Nero placed Zaffiro back in the crib, Rosso grinned up at him. “Thit,” he said clearly.

Nero froze. “Oh, no. No no no. That is the worst possible word for you to have picked up.”

Rosso giggled. “Thit!”

“You’re not even gonna help me out here, are you?” Nero appealed to Zaffiro with a sigh. “He’s _your_ brother. Get him in line.” Zaffiro blinked at him for a few seconds, then yawned. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Nero chuckled. “He’s always like this.”

By the time Nero made his way downstairs, the children had cornered Trish and were peppering her with questions about her new hairstyle, the motorcycle out front—which they were convinced was hers, no matter how she insisted it was Lady’s—and various personal questions that had no safe answer, such as where she was from, or what she did for a living. Only Flavia hung back from the group, casting shy glances at Lady.

“Hey!” Nero interrupted the lively chatter. “You all keep talking so much, the room’s gonna run out of oxygen.” He tugged on the bag slung over Carlo’s shoulder. “Go put your things away, change into your play clothes, and give the ladies some air.”

The boys reluctantly left the room, but Flavia remained. She crept up to Lady and gently patted her knee. “Miss Lady?” she whispered.

Lady looked down at the little girl in surprise. “What is it, sweetie?”

“You said you do… _ginnastica_?”

“That’s right. I started when I was about your age.”

Flavia clutched the hem of her pleated uniform skirt in both fists. “Can you teach me the… cartwheel?” Her gaze dropped to the floor. “I am the only girl in the kindergarten who can not do.”

Lady exchanged a glance with Nero over Flavia’s head, and he shrugged, gesturing that it was up to Lady. He knew how much importance children assigned to such trivial things, but _he_ certainly wasn’t able to teach Flavia anything of the sort. The closest move he knew was running up a wall and flipping off it backwards, but he suspected that was a bit beyond a four-year-old’s ability.

Lady was eying Flavia’s outfit. “Do you have any shorts?”

Flavia glanced at Nero uncertainly. “Shorts?”

“ _Pantaloncini_ ,” Nero translated.

“Ah!” Flavia nodded. “I have.”

“Good. Go put those on, and then we’ll go out to the soft grass, and I’ll show you how to cartwheel.”

Flavia raced down the hall, and Nero looked at Lady curiously. “Does it really matter if she wears shorts? She’s only four. Not like she’s got anything to hide.”

Lady shook her head. “It _shouldn_ _’t_ matter. But I attended a Catholic school until I was eighteen, and wore a uniform the whole time. You’d be appalled by how many sickos are out there, just watching for a flash of panties under a plaid skirt.”

Anger overwhelmed Nero’s surprise. “Any creep who looks at a four-year-old and thinks about _that_ …”

“…deserves far worse than anything society will ever give them for thinking it,” Lady cut him off. “But it still happens. My skirt got flipped up so often, I just started wearing my practice shorts underneath all the time.” She grinned fiercely. “Then I didn’t have to feel like I was putting on a show when I high-kicked the culprit in the face.”

Nero chuckled. “I’m glad at least some of them got punished.”

“Oh, they’re still being punished,” Trish said with a sly smile. “Sometimes, on slow nights, we go stand outside the clubs and just wait for some entitled bastard to put his hands where they aren’t invited.”

“If I’m feeling _really_ vindictive, I wear my uniform skirt,” Lady added.

“I’m surprised you still have it.”

“When I started hunting, I cut up all my old school skirts to make a full-circle magazine caddy.” She shrugged. “But it still looks enough like a uniform skirt to fool the drunks. Not that it takes much; their beer goggles have to be pretty damn thick to confuse a woman in her mid-forties for a schoolgirl.”

Nero stared. “You’re in your mid-forties?”

“I’m only a few months younger than Dante.” Lady cocked her head. “Wait, how old did you think I was?”

“I… I hadn’t really thought about it. Thirty-something, I guess? You don’t look your age.”

“Really?” Lady preened a little. “Well, I’m glad to hear all these years of putting up with Dante’s idiocy haven’t prematurely aged me.”

Nero reeled from a sudden realization. “A few _months_ , you said? Shit. That means you’re old enough to be my mom.”

Lady’s smile vanished. “You were earning a lot more points before you pointed that out.”

The conversation was mercifully cut short when the children returned _en masse_ , dressed in more casual clothing. Nero suggested they go to the park to help Julio practice his goalkeeping. “And you can take Lady with you,” he added. “She’s going to teach Flavia some cool moves.”

Kyle’s eyes widened, and he looked up at Lady hopefully. “Can I learn cool moves, too?”

Lady shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”

Nero tossed Julio the playground ball. “Be back by six,” he called after the children as they dragged Lady toward the park.

When they had gone, Trish relaxed into the upholstery. “Peace at last.”

The new peace was broken seconds later when the door to the garage burst open. “Behold!” Nico crowed, holding the toaster aloft. “My genius!”

Nero couldn’t resist the soft pitch. “It looks more like a toaster to me.”

Nico glared at him. “ _In spite of_ certain doubtful Debbies who said it couldn’t be done, I have made this ancient piece o’ junk like new again.” She paraded the toaster toward the kitchen. “And I’m gonna test it right now, because I’m feelin’ a bit peckish. A jam sandwich sounds just about right.”

Nero supposed he could spare some bread and jam, considering the money she’d saved him in replacing the appliance. “You can eat it in here,” he called. “We have plenty more books to get through.”

“I go an’ fix your toaster for you, an’ you still wanna put me to work?” she shouted back.

“Nico, you’re the only one who knows what we’re looking for!”

She returned to the living room, grumbling, a few minutes later. On a plate on her hand was a stack of toast, liberally slathered with Kyrie’s homemade preserves. She frowned at the stack of books by the chair. “Okay, let’s try an’ be logical about this. You started with the ones on the left?”

Nero shrugged. “Seemed like as good a place as any.”

“Hmm. But it would’a been close to the top o’ that stack, an’ you’ve gone through a few books already, so that means I probably dropped it somewhere else.” She jerked her head to one side. “Scoot,” she told Trish. “I need the chair.”

Trish arched an eyebrow at this dismissal, but slid out of the way. Nico balanced her plate on one arm of the sofa, then settled into the chair as she had been the day before. She picked up the notebook Nero had been recording names in and stared at him. “Scare me.”

He blinked. “What?”

“Scare me. You know, like the kid did when he started shootin’ lightnin’.”

“Uh… Boo?”

She rolled her eyes. “If you ain’t gonna take this seriously, I don’t know how you expect me to help.”

“Nico, I can’t just scare you if you’re expecting it!”

“Well, try! I can’t recreate the scene o’ the crime if you’re just gonna sit there starin’ at me like an idiot!”

Nero’s annoyance flared, and he seized it, channeled it to the ice-blue flame at his core. With a growl, he released his devil form, feeling the change tear through his physical being and pour off him in waves of raw power. His wings snapped into being with a crack that shook the windows, and the curtains reflected back the ethereal glow of the otherworldly energy bleeding through his skin and eyes.

Nico screamed for all she was worth. She scrabbled backward in the chair, eyes and mouth stretched wide at the sudden appearance of the glowing, snarling creature before her. The notebook went flying.

With a spreading satisfaction, Nero shed the enhanced form, skin tingling as the devil flame coiled back into his center. Belatedly, he noticed Trish’s stance unwinding; she must have reacted automatically to the threat of demonic power appearing at close range. “So. Scary enough?”

Color slowly returned to Nico’s face. “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” she breathed. “What the… what did you… holy _shit_.”

Nero resisted the impulse to gloat. “You said you wanted to see my wings. Figured I’d show ‘em to you.”

Nico pressed a hand to her chest and took several steadying breaths. “When you said wings, I thought you meant, like, _wings_. Like a bird, or somethin’. Not that you’d turn into some kinda…”

“Demon?” Nero snorted. “If that bothers you, I got some real bad news about the company you keep…”

“There’s a difference between knowin’ somethin’ an’ havin’ it pop right out an’ bite you,” Nico growled. She looked down at her empty hands, then at the floor. “Hey, where’d the notebook go?” They hunted for it for a few seconds. Nero spotted the corner peeking out from under the floor-length window curtain. “Good, good. Look around there.”

Nero pulled the curtains away from the wall and found a leatherbound volume a hand’s breadth from where the notebook had landed. “Well, I’ll say this for you, Nico, your aim is consistent.”

“I aim to please.” Nico vacated the chair and reclaimed her sandwiches, still looking a little shaky. “Anyway, that should be the book I was readin’ when baby Dante put on his little light show, so it should have the entry on that demon.”

Nero paged through the book until he found the passage Nico had read to him. “Got it! Smoke… full moon… Yeah, this sounds a lot like the demon I saw. Says it’s called a Nilepoch. Also known as ‘the life stealer,’ which sounds pretty ominous.” He browsed the next page. “Has a bunch of historic sightings listed. Doesn’t say how to reverse its effects, though.”

“Well, now that we have the name, maybe we can find more about it in some of these other books.” Licking the last of the jam from her fingers, Nico dragged a box out from behind the couch.

Trish collected another book. “Unfortunately, whoever compiled these volumes didn’t think to include an index. It’s going to take a long time to look through them all.”

“You got someplace to be?”

“Actually, yes.” Trish stood and stretched. “I happen to know Dante doesn’t have another month’s rent saved up, so if he’s going to have any shop to come back to, somebody needs to be working. And despite its history, Fortuna seems to be an even less profitable place to operate than the mainland.”

“Tell me about it,” Nero muttered. “It’s weird—except for that one this morning, I haven’t gotten a single job request all week. Usually there’s _somebody_ calling about a demon sighting every couple of days, even if they can’t afford to pay regular rates.”

Nico nodded. “I had a couple o’ messages waitin’ when I got home, but when I called back, they said they didn’t need us any more.”

“Sounds like that mysterious new hunter got there first,” Trish mused. “I wonder who it is.”

“Let’s just hope they get tired o’ their new hobby real fast.” Nico wrenched a file folder out of the tightly-packed box in front of her and opened it. “Aw, hell.”

“What’s wrong?”

“These files. I brought them all ‘cause I thought they’d have somethin’ about demon experiments, but they’re just old employee records.” Nico dropped the folder on top of the box and shoved it back behind the couch. “That was a lot o’ weight I could’a saved myself carryin’.”

“Well, there’s still a whole garage full of books we haven’t even started on.” Nero smiled grimly and tossed Nico a volume from the stack beside him. “So let’s get to work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, remember that school uniform with the plaid skirt that Lady is wearing in the DMC3 _Code 2: Vergil_ manga? She would have been around eighteen then... And given her balance work in the fight cutscenes, there is no doubt in my mind that she had some kind of gymnastics or dance background. (Yes, I am rationalizing ALL my personal headcanons here.)


	11. Chapter 11

The console clock had already chimed eleven when Nero finally set aside his books and climbed the narrow stairs. Words in archaic script swam before his eyes, and it was all he could do to keep placing one foot in front of the other. He had no right to be this exhausted when all he’d done for most of the day was sit on the sofa, but all that reading had tired him out. He hadn’t spent so much time studying books since… well, _ever_.

Kyrie was already in bed, though she lifted her head when he entered the room. “Find anything?” she asked through a yawn.

Nero shook his head as he began undressing. “Nothing more than what I filled you in on before dinner. We’ve still got a lot of material to go through, but we had to quit for the night. Lady kept nodding off, and I could barely keep my eyes open.”

“It’s probably best that you take a break, then. If you’re that tired, you’re liable to miss clues.” Kyrie yawned again, but jerked upright at a scraping sound over their heads. “What was that?”

Nero listened. After a few seconds, the sound repeated. “Something’s on the roof.”

“An animal, maybe?” Kyrie looked unconvinced, as was Nero. The island’s fauna consisted mainly of birds, small rodents that had arrived via ship, and a handful of cats and dogs imported as pets. Nothing lived here that should be clambering over a steep roof in the middle of the night, except perhaps stray demons.

Nero concentrated and reached out. He thought he felt the merest flicker of… _something,_ but he couldn’t be certain what it was, nor whether it was a threat. A glance at Rosso and Zaffiro’s crib found both babies awake and staring up at the ceiling, however, and that was enough to convince him to take action. “I’m going out to check.”

“Nero, be careful,” Kyrie urged as he retrieved Blue Rose from the gun locker in their closet. “Some of the roof tiles are loose.”

“Good thing I can sprout wings, then,” he replied with a grin. He hoped it didn’t come to that, though; in his state of fatigue, he wasn’t sure if he could summon the energy to transform. His little display for Nico earlier in the day had drained the pent-up power that fizzed at his core, and it usually took the adrenaline rush of a good fight to restore it. He supposed it was possible that hurtling toward the ground at the speed of gravity could produce a similar rush, but that was a theory he hoped never to test under pressure.

Nero shifted the boys’ crib aside and opened the dormer window. There was a narrow ledge of roof just below it, and he eased out onto it, testing each step before committing his weight. A few of the old terra cotta tiles were cracked, and others shifted beneath his combat boots. It wouldn’t take much to send him tumbling to the street below.

He crept along the ledge and flattened himself against the side of the dormer, lying nearly prone on the steep roof, and aimed Blue Rose up toward the peak. The night was dark, but there was the faintest silhouette blocking the starlight. “I don’t really want to wake the neighbors with a gunfight,” Nero called, “so I’m gonna give you a chance to identify yourself before I put holes in you.”

The answer was a familiar chuckle. “You know, if I _were_ an enemy, the light from your bedroom window would have given me a clear shot at you before you ever saw me.”

Nero sighed and sagged against the dormer. “Trish, what the hell are you doing up here?”

“Keeping watch, like I always do.” There was a rustle, a spark of electricity, and in the darkness a tiny flame curled to life. Trish held up the makeshift torch, which proved to be a twist of grease-soaked paper. The light flickered unevenly over her leather-clad form and the flat box on her lap. “And I figured if any of your collection of small humans saw me bring a pizza into the house, they’d want me to share.” She lifted a triangle of sagging dough and bit into it, stringing melted cheese out for half the length of her arm.

“The kids are asleep. And I’m amazed you can eat anything, given how many helpings of pasta you had at dinner.”

Trish shrugged. “I try to sample the local varieties wherever I go. You know, I expected something more artisanal, this close to Italy, but this isn’t much different than what we get at home.”

“Yeah, our only authentic Italian pizzeria closed six years ago, after one of The Savior’s arms crashed through the roof and flattened the owner.” Nero smiled grimly. “Now all we’ve got is a franchise from one of the international chains. Twice the price, half the flavor.”

“It’s not bad, though.” Paper consumed, Trish’s torch winked out, plunging the roof into darkness once again. “Anyway, you can rest easy. I’ll keep an eye on things from up here.”

“Thanks. Just… try not to make any noise, okay? Kyrie nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard you prowling around.”

“Sorry. One of the tiles slipped. Your roof needs a lot of repair, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s on the list.” Nero inched back down the incline until he could grip the window frame, which he used to lever himself back into the bedroom. Kyrie was seated on the edge of the bed, hands clasped anxiously in her lap. “Everything’s fine,” he told her as he latched the window. “Trish knocked a tile loose. She’s keeping watch in case any demons come around.” Which was probably for the best, after the stunt he’d pulled to scare Nico that afternoon. If there were any demons in the area, the surge of power from releasing his devil form could have attracted attention. At least Trish was more than capable of dealing with anything that showed up.

“Oh, good.” Kyrie seemed to deflate with relief. “I’m glad she’s here.”

Something in Kyrie’s tone caught his attention, and he took her hands. “Hey, what’s wrong? Are you worried about something?”

“Not really. It’s just… a lot of little things have made me a bit nervous, lately.”

“Such as?”

She shook her head. “I completely forgot to mention it, because it happened the same day Nico called to say you were hurt, and it didn’t turn out to be anything significant. But someone broke into the garage while you were away.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Nothing was taken,” she said hastily. “And there really wasn’t much damage; just a couple of missing screws and a bent latch plate. I managed to fix it myself. I thought it was probably just someone looking for shelter, or a spare can of fuel, maybe. But it’s never happened before.”

“No, it hasn’t.” Nero sank down beside her on the bed. Fortuna’s economy had never been robust; the Order had discouraged tourism and foreign investment, and once the mining operation had failed, business and trade with the mainland had existed on a largely parochial basis. Since the Order’s collapse, the remaining population had grown increasingly desperate for work, with more people abandoning the island each year. Even the Italian real estate developers that were usually eager to snap up scenic island properties wouldn’t touch Fortuna, given the unsavory rumors about the “earthquake” that had destroyed so much of the city. “I don’t know how long we’re going to be able to stay here,” he murmured.

Kyrie looked up in alarm. “Nero, we can’t abandon this place just because things get a little difficult. The children need us, and—”

“I know,” he assured her. “We’d never leave the kids to fend for themselves. And this is your home— _our_ home—and I don’t want you to have to leave it, either. But at some point, we’re going to have to face the possibility of change. There’s barely enough work to keep food on the table as it is, and now that there’s a new hunter in town…”

“A new hunter?”

“Yeah, I didn’t have the chance to tell you before the kids got back. Apparently we’ve got some competition. Sniped us on a paying job today.”

Kyrie said nothing, but squeezed his hand. He knew she understood the implications of losing even a fraction of their income.

Nero yawned, eyes watering. “Let’s talk about all this tomorrow, okay? I’m beat.”

“And I’m cold.” Kyrie lifted the covers and wriggled beneath them, flashing him a smile that made him forget all his troubles for a moment. “Hurry and come to bed, so I can steal all your body heat.”

That was, Nero decided, a small price to pay to sleep beside her.

* * *

Nero frowned as he stared into the crib. Rosso and Zaffiro stared back, expectant. When Nero didn’t move, Zaffiro wobbled to his feet and extended his arms. “Up,” he piped. Rosso soon joined his brother, and they chorused the word together. “Up!”

“This is _definitely_ not normal,” Nero said.

Kyrie turned her back to him and held her hair out of the way so he could fasten the chain of her favorite pendant—the one he’d given her on that fateful morning six years ago, which she still wore nearly every day. “What isn’t normal?”

“These kids have got to be _twice_ the size they were when Nico brought them here. And they’re standing, now. And talking. They weren’t doing that at first.”

Kyrie considered the twins. “You’re right. I thought they were around a year when I first saw them, but now they look closer to… what, sixteen or eighteen months?”

“It’s only been a week. Even devil hybrids couldn’t grow _that_ fast, could they? I mean, as far as I know I was a normal kid except for the white hair.”

“There was very little _normal_ about you,” Kyrie teased, giving him a playful poke. “But no, I don’t remember you growing any faster than usual. There must be something else at work.” She brightened suddenly. “Maybe they’re just recovering from whatever made them like this, and they’ll eventually return to normal on their own!”

Nero groaned. “I do _not_ want to be responsible for piloting these two through adolescence.”

“Well, at the rate they’re growing, at least it would be blessedly short.” Kyrie adjusted her skirt. “I hear the children moving around downstairs, so I need to go get breakfast ready.”

“Go ahead. I’ll be down soon.” When Kyrie had left the room, Nero closed the bedroom door and turned the fussing twins loose on the floor. “Okay, you two can explore for as long as it takes me to get dressed. I bet you’re bored to death, stuck in that crib all day.”

The boys prowled around the room, usually at a crawl but occasionally aspiring to a halting toddle, touching each object they found—and occasionally tasting, as well. Nero interfered only once, when Rosso discovered a power cord and was in danger of bringing Kyrie’s reading lamp down on his head.

All too soon, he was ready to go downstairs, which meant he had to corral the twins. As expected, they were not happy about being confined again, and Nero’s attempts to put them back in their crib raised an ear-throbbing dual shriek of protest. “Message received,” Nero groaned, plugging his ears with his fingers. “You need exercise and mental stimulation. So I guess I need to find you some kind of big playpen, or something.”

He slipped out of the bedroom and closed the door behind him to muffle some of the sound. The chatter and chaos of the breakfast table seemed almost peaceful after the angry toddler chorus.

“What’s all that about?” Kyrie raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Is someone hurt?”

“They’re angry because I gave them a taste of freedom, and then put them back in prison.” Nero accepted his breakfast plate with a nod of thanks. “I think the days of leaving them in that crib all day are numbered.”

Kyrie nodded slowly. “We’ll have to work something out.”

Nero knew Kyrie wasn’t ready to expose the other children to the twins just yet, but he wasn’t sure how long they could keep juggling children through the house. Or adults, for that matter. “Where are Lady and Trish?”

“Lady is in the shower. I haven’t seen Trish yet.”

“She’s probably waiting until the kids leave for school. More space at the table.”

“And fewer children,” Kyrie murmured with a knowing look. Trish was relatively easy to read, after all.

Soon the entire flock of children had been hustled out the door, and Nero took a few seconds to appreciate the silence before collecting the plates from the table. “You want dishes or diapers?”

Kyrie assembled a plate of fruit and diced ham for the boys. “I’ll take diapers, since you handled that this morning. But you might as well wait until we have all the dishes. I’ll fetch the twins down here for breakfast. Be right back.”

Nero poured himself some coffee, and had just sat at the table to enjoy the rare moment of solitude when Kyrie’s shriek broke the stillness. “ _Nero!_ ”

Nero bolted toward the sound. “What? What’s wrong?”

Kyrie stood at the top of the stairs, eyes wide. “Zaffiro is _gone!_ ”

Nero took the stairs three at a time, darting past her into their bedroom. Rosso was clinging to the crib rail, looking decidedly unhappy. Zaffiro was nowhere to be seen. Nero made a slow circuit of the room.

“I looked under the bed and in the closet,” Kyrie was saying. “The door was closed when I came up, so he can’t have left the room, but… Where could he _be?_ ”

Nero got down on his knees and peered around the room from the perspective of a toddler. Most of the space beneath the bed was taken up with storage boxes, but the gap beside them was empty. There was nothing beneath the bedside table. The dresser had decorative wood trim across the base that left a gap of only a few inches, too narrow for a child to crawl beneath. “Okay,” he worked through his thoughts aloud, “the window is closed. The closet door was closed, and you checked it anyway. The bedroom door was closed. So he has to be in this room.”

Kyrie was looking behind the pillows on their bed. “But we’ve checked every place big enough for him to hide.” She stopped suddenly and stared at Nero. “You don’t think… None of their special powers include… _invisibility_ , do they?”

The thought was absurd, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to laugh. “Not that they’ve ever mentioned to me. Although… Vergil does sort of skip around in space, like… teleporting, I guess you’d call it.”

Kyrie’s gaze shifted to the window, with the street two stories below. “What if he skipped out of this room?”

“I don’t think he _can_ , though. Not on his own, I mean. I think it’s something to do with the Yamato.” Nero ran a hand through his hair, wishing more than ever that he’d asked Dante to tell him more about their shared devil heritage. “And even then, I can’t imagine him being able to control that at _this_ age.”

In the crib, Rosso was shaking the side rail in growing agitation. He let out a frustrated cry. “Hush,” Kyrie said, hurrying to him and stroking the white fuzz atop his head. “We’ll find him.”

“Buddah!” Rosso’s face crumpled, and he turned his limited efforts to communicate on Nero. “Buddah!”

Kyrie tilted her head. “I think he’s saying ‘brother.’ I wonder if he—oh!” She dove forward to catch Rosso as he hooked an ankle over the rail and pulled himself up, nearly spilling over. She deposited him back into the crib, but Rosso immediately made another escape attempt. “Buddah!” he repeated angrily.

This time Nero scooped him up before he could tumble to the floor. “Well, I guess that explains how Zaffiro got out of the crib.” The solution to the crisis struck him at once, and he nearly laughed. “Of course! We don’t need to look for Zaffiro, as long as we’ve got Rosso.”

Kyrie stared as though he’d lost his mind. “What do you mean?”

“Dante once told me that as far back as he could remember, he and Vergil could sense each other’s location. Some sort of twin radar, or something.” He plopped Rosso down on the floor. “Go find your brother, kiddo.”

Rosso immediately crawled to the corner where the dresser stood, then vanished into the narrow space between one end of it and the wall. Nero leaned over to discover a missing piece of wood trim at the base of the dresser, making a hole just large enough to accommodate a crawling baby. It was impossible to spot from the front.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Nero murmured. He dropped to his stomach and peered into the shadows beneath the furniture. Near the wall, Zaffiro was stretched out on his front, apparently sleeping peacefully. As Nero watched, Rosso nestled in beside his brother. The agitated manner he’d displayed in the crib vanished, and he calmly palmed a dust bunny.

“Is he under there?” Kyrie asked nervously.

“Yup. Sound asleep.” Nero got to his feet and dusted himself off. “I have no idea how to get them out of there, though. It’s too small a gap to pull them out safely, and it’s probably too risky to try to move the dresser while they’re underneath.”

Kyrie bit her lip. “So what do we do?”

Nero shrugged. “I guess we wait for them to get hungry and come out on their own. And in the mean time…” He frowned at the crib. “We’re going to need to come up with a better way to keep them contained.”

* * *

By the time they returned to the kitchen, Lady and Trish were polishing off the breakfast they’d served themselves. Beside Lady’s plate lay Nero’s notebook and the volume with the description of the Nilepoch. Lady glanced up from writing as they entered. “Everything okay with the Spardini? I thought I heard some shouting.”

“They’ve figured out how to escape the crib.” Kyrie sighed and sank into a chair. “It gave me a fright when I discovered one of them missing.”

Nero gestured to Lady’s work. “You find anything new?”

“No. I’m just copying down all the information about this demon, so I can check my books at home.”

“You’re going home?” Kyrie asked. “You only just arrived!”

Lady nodded. “Trish needs to get back to the shop, and now that I have a name, I want to see if I can find anything about that demon in any of the more… unique books I have.”

“Unique?” Trish arched an eyebrow. “More unique than the Order’s demonology encyclopedias?”

“I… may have absconded with some books from the library in Temen-ni-gru before it sank back into the underworld,” she confessed.

Trish’s jaw dropped. “You did _what?_ ”

Lady shrugged. “Dante left me in the library, after I was injured. I was just sitting there for a long time, with nothing to look at but those books, and I thought they might come in handy if I wanted to keep hunting demons. So I tossed a bunch of them off the side of the tower. Picked them up on the street after everything was over.”

Trish was still staring at her, wide-eyed. “Do you have any idea just _how_ forbidden that knowledge is to mortals? Even lesser demons aren’t permitted to know some of what’s contained in that library. Those books must be worth a _fortune_.”

“Well, it’s good to know I can sell them off if I ever want to retire. Though for now, I’m just hoping they have something that helps us get Dante back.” Lady tore off the page she’d copied, then pushed the notebook across to Nero and Kyrie. “If you make a list of anything you need from the mainland, I can try to bring some of it when I come back.”

Kyrie flushed. “I… we couldn’t impose on you.”

Lady leveled a look at her. “I’ve been inside the stores here. I know how little selection they have, and how expensive everything is. If you need baby supplies, or clothes for the kids, or anything for the orphanage, just put it on the list. And don’t worry about the money,” she added. “You can just pay me back whenever you’re able. And I fully intend to bill Dante and Vergil for their share of the expenses, once they’re back to normal. You shouldn’t be stuck paying for them on top of everything else.”

Nero appreciated her continued optimism that they could restore the two toddlers to their adult selves, but he wasn’t certain he could factor that likelihood into his financial planning. Still, Lady was right; Fortuna offered limited retail options, and they had been borrowing most of their baby supplies from the orphanage. He reached for the pen and started a list.

Kyrie frowned as she looked over his shoulder. “Can we afford this much?” she whispered.

“Probably not. But we won’t need the baby things for long, especially at the rate they’re growing, and we can always resell or swap things once they outgrow them. I’m sure there are a lot of other parents around who can’t afford to buy new.”

Kyrie cupped her chin in her hand, tapping her lips thoughtfully. “You know, that gives me an idea. We could set up some kind of event at the orphanage—something where parents and foster families could trade what they are no longer using for other things they need.”

“Like a swap meet,” Lady said. “We used to have something similar in the hunter community, believe it or not. Only we were trading guns and books, mostly.”

“Oh, books!” Kyrie took the pen from Nero and added that to the list. “Julio has read every book in the house at least twice. If you can find something affordable…”

“Oh, I can,” Lady assured her. “When the city library removes their older books from circulation, they sell them by the bag. I’m sure I can pick up some decent children’s books there, if you don’t mind buying used.”

“No, not at all.” Kyrie looked over the list, added another couple of items, then slid it back across to Lady. “We really appreciate this.”

“It’s no trouble. I’m happy to help.” Lady stood and carried her dishes to the sink, followed by Trish. “We do need to get going if we’re going to make the ten o’clock ferry, though.”

Lady collected her things from the living room and they made their brief farewells, promising to return in the next week or two. When they’d gone, Kyrie began to dismantle Lady’s makeshift bed on the sofa. “So what do we do now? You still have more books to look through, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but I’m thinking I need to figure out some kind of containment for the twins first.” Nero glanced around the room. “I was hoping we could block off a corner down here for them to play in, but there’s really not much space in here.”

“There’s not much space anywhere in this house,” Kyrie sighed. “Only in the garage, and that’s not very hospitable for two babies.”

The mention of the garage reminded Nero of what Kyrie had told him the previous night. “Especially if people are going around breaking in.” He laughed suddenly. “Oh, man. Can you imagine if we put them out there, and someone tried to kidnap them?”

“Oh, dear.” Kyrie hid her giggle behind a hand. “It shouldn’t be funny, but all I can picture is the kidnapper’s face when both of their new babies begin shooting lightning everywhere.”

“They’d probably break into the garage all over again just to return them.” They laughed harder. It was a much-needed release from the perpetual stress that lay heavy over their lives, and they sank onto the couch for a moment, enjoying the respite. “I think Nico still has some of that scrap conduit I picked up. I bet I could put together a frame for a playpen pretty easily. Then we’d just need something for the sides.”

Kyrie hummed in thought. “The orphanage has a couple of damaged mattresses they’re going to throw away. I might be able to cut the ticking into strips and sew some side panels.” She brightened. “Oh, and the stuffing! I could use that to make some soft toys. The boys will need things to play with, and anything they don’t use, the orphanage will.”

Nero slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Only you could transform literal trash into furniture and stuffed animals. Have I ever told you that you’re amazing?”

“And you’re going to turn discarded construction pipe into a playpen.” She leaned into his shoulder. “I think we’re a pretty amazing team.”

Nero could happily have spent the rest of the morning sitting with her, but a prolonged cry from overhead reminded him of the other claims on his time. “Sounds like they finally got hungry after all,” he sighed. “If you’ll bring them down for breakfast, I’ll get started on those dishes.”

Kyrie laughed as they stood up together. “See? Teamwork.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I gave Nero a gun locker (and brought back the Red Queen case from DMC4, which will appear in later chapters) because in _Visions of V_ he literally just keeps his weapons hanging on the wall of the garage. In the open. Where any one of his foster kids could walk by and pick them up. *fistshake* Be more responsible, Nero!
> 
> Also, behold my rationale for the Devil Trigger gauge. It's all adrenaline. *handwave*


	12. Chapter 12

It took the next three days to complete the frame for the playpen, with Nero and Kyrie trading off babysitting duties to work on their respective parts of the project. In a rare charitable mood—or perhaps driven to sympathy by the shadows of exhaustion growing beneath Nero’s eyes—Nico contributed to the design by engineering hinges in the conduit, so the entire frame would collapse like an umbrella. “After all,” she pointed out, “you ain’t never gonna get that thing up those skinny stairs to your bedroom if it don’t go totally flat.”

By the time Nero wrangled the frame into the living room on Monday afternoon, Kyrie had managed to assemble fabric side panels using reclaimed mattress ticking, some quilted bedsheet scraps, and pieces of a truly hideous damask curtain she’d found somewhere. She watched as Nero unfolded the frame and connected a set of elastic cables to hooks along the bottom rail. “Even comes with shock absorbers,” he grinned. “There’s a piece of reinforced carpet that goes over the whole bottom, but I left that out in the sun to air out. I swear it was only in Nico’s workshop for ten minutes, but it came out smelling like cigarettes all the same.”

“Nero, this is amazing!” Kyrie exclaimed as she circled the frame. It was twice as deep as the crib, and easily four times as large—plenty of room for two toddlers and a few toys. “I knew you two would come up with something good, but this is even better than I imagined.”

“It’ll look even better once we get those side panels on.” He eyed the damask. “Well… three out of four sides will look better.”

“We’ll put that side toward the wall,” she laughed. “I know it’s not pretty, but it was free.”

“If it was free, it’s beautiful.”

They had just begun attaching the side panels when the children returned from school. The curious flock crowded around the new object, poking at it and asking questions. “It’s for Rosso and Zaffiro,” Kyrie explained patiently. “So they can play safely. They’re too little to crawl around the house, because they could get hurt.”

It was difficult to work with so many curious hands in the way. “Why don’t you all go change into your play clothes?” Nero suggested. “You can see this when it’s done.”

Four of the children scampered toward their bedrooms, but Julio hung back. “Do you want us to go to the park again?”

The question lacked his usual enthusiasm, and Nero took note of his averted eyes and slumped shoulders. “I thought you liked going to the park.”

Julio shrugged. “I guess.”

Nero beckoned him closer. “Okay, kid, talk to me. Tell me what’s up.”

Julio scuffed at the floor with his shoe. “Every day for the past week, you’ve sent us to the park the minute we get home. It’s like you don’t want us here any more.”

“Oh, Julio.” Kyrie moved to his side and put an arm around his shoulders. “That’s not it at all.”

“It really isn’t like that,” Nero said. “We just had some stuff to take care of here, and…”

“Like Rosso and Zaffiro?” Julio’s cheeks burned as soon as the words slipped out, and Nero’s guilt deepened. He’d been so focused on his father and uncle that he’d virtually ignored his own foster children for over a week. No wonder Julio was jealous.

“Kyrie,” Nero said, “do you think you can maybe keep the other kids busy for a couple of minutes?”

Kyrie nodded in understanding; they frequently ran interference for each other when one of the children needed a private moment to talk. She vanished down the hall, and Nero heard her announcing something about snacks in the kitchen.

Nero moved to the sofa and patted the cushion next to him. Julio reluctantly sat, but kept his eyes fixed on the floor. “Look, Julio… I’m gonna be honest with you, because I think you’re old enough to understand. But I don’t want to worry the other kids. So if I tell you what’s been going on, will you promise not to say anything to them?”

Julio looked up in surprise, meeting Nero’s eyes for the first time. “Yeah, I promise.”

Nero drew a long breath, wondering how he could make any of this make sense to a twelve-year-old when he was still working through it himself. “You know I grew up at the orphanage.”

Julio nodded; they’d all heard the story. “After Kyrie found you on the doorstep.”

“That’s right. Nobody knew who my birth parents were. Kyrie’s family sort of took me in, but I spent my whole life thinking I didn’t have any family of my own. Until last summer.”

“After your accident?” A memory of anguish flickered over Julio’s face, and Nero recalled Kyrie telling him how upset Julio had been, apparently convinced that he, like the boy’s father, would never come home from the hospital.

“Yeah, around then. You remember when Nico and I left for a few days? Well, while I was gone, I… I learned who my father was. And I even met him.”

Julio’s eyes stretched wide. “You really found your father?”

“Yeah. My uncle, too.”

“That’s great!”

Nero smiled, but shook his head. It was every foundling’s dream, he supposed, but the circumstances under which he’d met Vergil had been anything but ideal. “It was definitely a… memorable experience. Anyway, I’ve met up with them a few times over the past year. You know, spending time with them, trying to get to know my old man a little bit. But two weeks ago… there was an accident.”

“Was that when you got hurt? You said you fell.”

Nero nodded. “Yeah, that accident. I hit my head, but my father and uncle… they… they got hurt a lot worse than I did.” It wasn’t _exactly_ untrue, he reasoned; they’d certainly suffered more lasting effects.

Julio’s brow crinkled with worry. “Are they going to be okay?”

“I don’t know,” Nero said, this time with complete honesty. “Lady and Trish, who came to stay last week? They’re my uncle’s friends. We’ve been trying to figure out who’s responsible for what happened, what to do next, how we can help take care of them. That sort of thing.” He put a hand on Julio’s shoulder. “I’m sorry if it seemed like I was pushing you out the door. I’ve just been really distracted by all of this.”

Julio nodded. “I understand. I was really scared when my dad was sick, too.”

“And Zaffiro and Rosso…” Nero saw Julio’s lips tighten, and realized he had to be as honest as possible about them, as well. “They’re family, too. They were living at my uncle’s place, but there’s nobody else who can look after them right now.”

“Oh!” Understanding swept any trace of resentment from Julio’s face. “So you _have_ to take care of them. I thought…” He flushed and ducked his head.

Nero prompted him with a nudge to the shoulder. “What did you think?”

“I thought… we were too old,” Julio murmured reluctantly.

It took Nero a moment to follow his meaning. “You thought we were planning to replace you with a newer model?”

Julio shrugged. “It’s always the young kids that get adopted, like Maria. That’s what everyone wants.”

“Nah.” Nero ruffled Julio’s hair, keeping his tone deliberately light. “We finally got you trained just the way we like. Why would we ever trade you in on something that has smelly diapers and cries all the time?” Julio smiled weakly at that, and Nero slung an arm around his shoulders. At the contact, the boy turned and wrapped both arms around Nero’s waist, surprising him. Usually Kyrie was the one who gave and received hugs, but there was something almost desperate in Julio’s grip. “Hey,” Nero said gently, “you’re _never_ gonna be too old.”

“Sister Gratia says I am,” Julio murmured into Nero’s shirt. “She said nobody has adopted a kid over the age of five since before the earthquake.”

Nero made a mental note to ask Kyrie to have a stern word with the orphanage staff. Still, he couldn’t deny the veracity of the statement; he doubted if even a dozen children had been adopted in the six years since the fall of the Order, and most of those had been infants. “Well, I guess that means you can keep eating Kyrie’s cooking for as long as you want.”

Julio remained very still, as if afraid to jeopardize his position by breathing too deeply. “You… you don’t mind? You’ll let me stay here?”

“Of course we don’t mind. You can stay here as long as you want to.” He tried to lighten the mood again. “I mean, if you’re still living here when you’re fifty, we might need to talk about a couple things…” Julio laughed and pulled away, head ducked in the embarrassment of a boy caught between childish vulnerability and teenage indifference, but Nero kept a hand on his shoulder. “We all good now?”

Julio nodded. “All good.”

“Cool. You wanna go find out what Kyrie’s bribed the other kids with in the kitchen?”

This time the nod was accompanied by a broad grin, and they squeezed past the sprawling frame of the playpen. “Nero,” Julio said as they approached the kitchen, “is there something I can do to help? With your dad, I mean. Or… or anything.”

“You’ve already been helping by keeping an eye on the younger kids when you go to the park,” Nero told him. He saw Julio’s hopeful look begin to wither, and quickly added, “But I’m definitely going to need some help getting this thing up the stairs and set up in our bedroom. How about we move it together, right after we grab a snack?”

“Sure!” Julio said brightly. He hurried into the kitchen to find a seat at the table.

Kyrie placed a narrow slice of cake in front of the boy before ducking out to check in with Nero. “Is everything okay?” she whispered.

“Yeah, we talked. I’ll fill you in later.” He shook his head. “Man, I hope Vergil and Dante get back to normal before they’re old enough to speak in complete sentences. This parenting thing is a frickin’ _minefield_.”

“Just think of all the practice you’re getting,” Kyrie murmured with a smile. “Now come have some cake.”

* * *

After polishing off the cake, the four boys helped Nero attach the remaining side panels to the frame, while Kyrie showed Flavia the stuffed toys she’d made.

“I like all!” said Flavia, patting the yarn mane of the striped pony. “They are all… _carini!_ ”

“I’m glad you think so,” Kyrie smiled, “because I need your advice! I want to give one toy to Rosso and one to Zaffiro. The others are for the children at the orphanage. But I don’t know which toys Rosso and Zaffiro would like best! Can you help me choose?”

Flavia stared at the animals in great concentration. Nero shot a grin over her head at Kyrie. Kyrie was an expert at coming up with simple tasks to make the children feel valued, while simultaneously keeping them out of the way.

“This for Zaffiro,” she pronounced, pointing to the pony. “Because it is blue.” Nero squinted at the mattress ticking on the panel he was fastening, and after a moment decided the stripes _did_ look more navy than black. What was it Kyrie was always saying about women seeing more colors than men? Something to do with the number of rods or cones in the eye, or something. Half the time he thought Kyrie was just inventing all the different shades of white he couldn’t identify, but Flavia was too young to be in on that conspiracy, so he supposed there must be some truth to it.

Kyrie set aside the pony and waited for Flavia’s next choice. All of the animals were equally adorable, with the exception of a sunfish made out of the revolting damask fabric. Nero had teased Kyrie that, through no fault of her sewing skill, the flat shape and unsavory colors made it look more like roadkill than a fish. At least he wouldn’t have to see the ugly thing after today—

“This for Rosso,” Flavia said, placing a hand on the fish. Nero tried to disguise his strangled laughter as a cough. On second thought, if Flavia could look at that fabric and not want to be sick, he doubted whether she had _any_ functioning rods or cones or whatever in her eyes.

Kyrie was not fooled by Nero’s sudden bout of coughing. She narrowed her eyes at him before thanking Flavia sincerely for her help. “If you like, we can go to the orphanage tomorrow, and you can help me deliver the rest of these. Would you like that?”

Flavia nodded enthusiastically. “And then we go to the park?” she asked. “So I can cartwheel?”

“If the weather is good,” Kyrie agreed. Lady had apparently instructed Flavia only to attempt the move on a soft surface, such as grass, and she had been eager to practice her newfound skill whenever possible.

Nero finished the last strap on his panel and glanced at the other three sides to see them in matching condition. “I think we’re ready to take this upstairs. Ready, Julio?” They collapsed the frame and carried it carefully up the stairs. Nero called a halt at the bedroom door, which had remained closed ever since the twins had shown their aptitude for escape. “I need to corral the boys first, so they don’t get in the way while we’re setting up. Hey, Carlo!”

“Yes?” called a voice from the bottom of the stairs.

“There’s a big piece of carpet out front. Can you get it and bring it up here?”

“Sure!” The front door opened and closed.

Nero found Rosso and Zaffiro parked in the middle of the floor, watching the door expectantly. Rosso had a soggy ball of socks crammed in his mouth—where he’d gotten those, Nero couldn’t guess—and Zaffiro had apparently emptied the wastebasket and assembled an impressive mountain of crumpled tissues. “It’s a good thing you two have superhuman immune systems,” Nero muttered. He scooped up the twins and deposited them in their crib, which elicited a loud duet of protest until the boys’ attention was arrested by the huge frame coming through the door. Nero and Julio made quick work of setting it up—damask side toward the wall, Nero made certain—and, once Carlo had produced the carpet insert, the playpen was ready for its new tenants. Scipio and Kyle trailed behind Carlo, watching the proceedings with great interest. Nero supposed there was no harm in letting them see the finished product; after all, they had helped assemble it, and as Julio had reminded him, it was the first project they’d worked on as a family in weeks.

“Everyone make some room,” Kyrie instructed. She stood in the doorway, holding Flavia’s hand. The little girl’s other arm was hugging the two stuffed animals she’d selected to her chest. “I told her she could give them to the boys, since she picked them out,” she explained to Nero.

Nero was surprised that Kyrie had relaxed her no-interaction rule, but it _had_ been a week since the tantrum incident. He collected the twins and placed them carefully into their new play space, which they immediately began to explore. Once he was satisfied that there would be no tears or tantrums at the change, he beckoned Flavia over and lifted her up so she could reach inside. “For Zaffiro,” Flavia intoned with great ceremony, holding the pony out to the baby in blue. Zaffiro stared at the offering before fisting his short fingers in the yarn mane and tail. “For Rosso,” she said, presenting the fish to the other baby. Rosso seized the fish and, with great relish, stuffed its dorsal fin in his mouth.

Nero suppressed his laughter. “I think you chose really well,” he told Flavia. “They really seem to like the toys you picked out for them.”

Flavia beamed at this praise. “Can I play with them?”

“I think we’d better let them get used to their new playpen for a while,” he said. “We don’t want to overwhelm them with too many new things at once.”

From downstairs he heard the trill of the telephone. “I’ll get it,” Kyrie offered. “Children, downstairs, please. Let’s give the boys some quiet time.”

Nero stayed, watching the twins test the corners and stretch up for the bar at the top of the frame, which—for now—was still a good foot out of their reach. “ _This_ ought to keep you contained,” he murmured. “At least, until you figure out you can sprout wings.”

The superstitious temptation to knock on wood was strong, but before he could indulge it, Kyrie called from below. “Nero! Mr. Morrison is on the telephone!”

Nero hurried back downstairs—closing the bedroom door behind him, just in case—and took the receiver from her. “Morrison! Hey! I was hoping you’d call.”

“ _Mister_ Morrison,” the gravelly voice said. Nero wondered why the old broker was correcting him, until the words were followed by a hearty chuckle. “That gal o’ yours sure is sweet. I can’t remember the last time somebody called me _mister_.”

“Yeah, she is pretty sweet.” He winked at Kyrie, who rolled her eyes and went upstairs to see how the twins were settling in. “So what’s the news?”

“I got two things for you,” Morrison said, suddenly all business. Nero pressed the receiver hard against his ear; the connection was going bad again. That clicking interference was _really_ getting annoying. “First, I asked every broker, fixer and middleman I know along the coast about that new hunter workin’ in Fortuna, and nobody’s heard _nothin_.’ Most o’ them knew about you, but they said they haven’t had any requests from anyone on the island. Said they just assumed there wasn’t enough money on Fortuna to make it worth anyone else getting into the business there.”

“Yeah, there isn’t,” Nero confirmed. “That’s why having two of us here is bad news.”

“Well, it’s a free market. Anybody can give it a try if they’ve got the knack. But I suppose if there’s no money in it, they’ll move on to greener pastures soon enough.”

“We can hope so. What’s your other piece of news?”

“Ah, right. Lady wanted me to give you a message. Says she’s got a lead on that demon you’ve been looking for, and she’s hoping to head out your way this weekend so she can tell you all about it. She’s just workin’ a couple o’ small jobs for me first, to get some quick cash. Says she’s renting a trailer for the trip.”

“A trailer? Why?”

“Apparently she went shopping.” Nero could practically hear Morrison’s shrug over the line. “Don’t know what that’s about, but she said somethin’ about a clearance sale at a kids’ warehouse. You know what that means?”

“It means I’m gonna have to free up a lot more storage space in a hurry,” Nero muttered. “Hey, thanks for calling. I appreciate it.”

“No trouble,” Morrison said, a jovial lilt to his voice. “I’ll add the long distance fees to my cut on your next job.”

“Uh-huh. You just keep right on pretending there’s still such a thing as a metered land line in your city, and I’ll pretend to pay you.”

“Of course there’s a land line,” Morrison chuckled. “You think Dante knows what a mobile phone is?”

“Fair point,” Nero conceded. “But I happen to know _you_ use one.”

“Touché.”

“Later, Morrison.”


	13. Chapter 13

“That’s the last book in this set.” Kyrie tucked a heavy volume into the cardboard box beside her and stretched her arms over her head. “How many more to go?”

Nero rubbed his eyes and squinted at the boxes stretching from his chair to the garage. “Four, looks like.”

“I don’t know whether to hope they’re full of relevant information that will help your father and uncle, or secretly wish they all turn out to be old encyclopedia sets, so we can put them back in the garage and forget about them.”

“Yeah, I’m feeling the same dilemma.” Nero marked his place in the book he was searching and tipped his head back. “How long have we been at this?”

“Today? Four hours. I also helped you on Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon, and on Wednesday you worked on it while I was at the orphanage. I don’t know how many hours that totals for the week, besides a lot.”

“And we haven’t found any other reference to a Nilepoch or life-stealer or anything that even sounds like them. It’s like they just don’t exist.”

“Or are very rare, at least.” Kyrie opened the book they’d been using as their lone reference. “These sightings _are_ spread pretty far apart.”

“I guess we just hope Lady has found something more helpful. Morrison said she…” Nero trailed off at the sound of a motorcycle engine in the distance. It grew louder, then cut out in front of the house, and he and Kyrie exchanged glances before racing to the door.

Lady was already striding up the front walk when they flung the door open. “Well, I guess that saves me the trouble of knocking,” she laughed.

Kyrie hurried forward to hug her, while Nero took her bag. “We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow. Morrison just said you were coming this weekend.”

Lady hesitated on the front step. “Is it a problem if I’m here today?”

“No, of course not! Come in.” Kyrie hustled her inside. “Watch your step; there are books everywhere. Here, let me take your coat.”

“I still have some things to unload. You want to do that now or later?”

Nero looked out at the compact motorcycle trailer parked behind Lady’s distinctive bike. It was smaller than he’d feared, when Morrison had first mentioned a trailer. “We can get it now. Morrison said you found a sale, or something?”

Lady nodded and fished her keys out of her jacket pocket. “When I started looking around for the things on your list, I found out one of those big chain stores was going out of business. Got a bunch of stuff for ninety percent off. I figured anything you don’t use, the orphanage will. Or you can save them for your swap meet.”

She unlocked the trailer to reveal a dozen shopping bags and boxes. Several were packed with clothing, one was filled with toys and games, and a smaller bag contained the bright pastels of baby products. Another bag was loaded with some sporting equipment, and a sturdy cardboard box full of children’s books was wedged into the corner.

“Oh, Lady, this is wonderful!” Kyrie’s eyes sparkled with gratitude as she rifled through one of the bags. “I’ve never even seen some of these things in the stores here.”

“Some things I wasn’t sure if you needed, but they were just too good a deal to pass up.”

Nero flinched at the thought of paying for something they didn’t actually need, but he couldn’t really complain when Lady had gone out of her way to shop for them. “So what’s the damage?”

Lady produced a receipt and handed it to him. “This is from the store. The books are on the house. I stopped at a garage sale, and when the woman heard I was buying things to help out an orphanage, she wouldn’t take a single penny for them.”

Nero stared at the receipt. “This can’t be right.”

Lady flashed a grin. “Ninety percent off, remember?”

“Yeah, but…” He stared at it for a few seconds longer, then showed it to Kyrie.

Kyrie’s eyes widened. “You got all this for… for that little?”

“Sure did. I told you I could get you a good deal.”

“But that’s…”

“The cost of two deluxe pizzas and a strawberry sundae, as Dante would account for it.” Lady shrugged. “No rush, though. We can settle up once things are back to normal.” She pulled out several shopping bags to reveal a large hard-sided briefcase at the back of the trailer. “Now _that_ is the one heavy thing in this lot, so Nero, it’s all yours. Kyrie and I can get the rest.”

She wasn’t exaggerating. From its size, Nero was expecting something the weight of a few bricks; instead, it felt as though he were trying to haul a suitcase full of lead. In the living room, he started to set the case on the coffee table, then thought better of it and placed it on the floor instead. He couldn’t afford to replace the coffee table if it broke under the weight. “What the he…ck do you _have_ in here, Lady?”

“You remember those books I dropped off of the Temen-ni-gru? Turns out they weigh a _lot_ more in our reality than they do in the underworld, or interstitial space, or whatever plane the tower actually occupied. You should have seen what they did to the concrete they landed on.” She mimed an explosion with her hands.

Kyrie looked thoughtful. “So the laws of physics are different in the underworld?”

“Given the things that crawl out of the underworld, it doesn’t really surprise me.” Lady divested herself of the bags and sat in the armchair, stretching her legs. “It also explains why even low-level demons can do so much damage to a human. They’re built for more resistance.”

“Is that why Nero is so strong?” Kyrie wondered. “Is it that part of his heritage?”

Nero’s ears warmed, and Lady grinned up at him. “Most likely. All the devils I’ve met are far stronger than a human. I’ve seen Trish lift a car with her bare hands, and Dante has an annoying habit of using my bikes as bludgeoning weapons.”

Nero winced. “That’s gotta be expensive.”

“You bet it is. Why do you think he’s always strapped for cash? He’s still paying off my Hardy Custom.” Lady started to lean forward to unlock the briefcase, then glanced at the clock. “Wait. How long until the kids get home?”

“Another half hour or so. Why?”

Lady shook her head. “We shouldn’t open up this particular can of worms until we have a couple of child-free hours available. It’s going to take some time to decode everything, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want them anywhere near this text. I mean, it’s just a book, but it did _literally_ come out of hell. There’s some pretty dark stuff in it.”

“In that case, let’s put it up in our bedroom until tomorrow,” Kyrie suggested. “There’s no chance of them finding it there. We can send the children out to play, and bring it down again once they’re gone.”

Nero stared at her. “You want to sleep with the hell-book in our room?”

She cocked her head as though she couldn’t understand his surprise. “It shouldn’t bother you, should it? And Dante and Vergil are both half-devil, too. Besides, they’ve both spent a lot of time in the underworld.”

“Yeah, but…” Nero wasn’t sure how to phrase the question. Kyrie was the most pure, angelic person he’d ever known; he would have expected her to banish the thing as far from her person as possible.

She seemed to understand his confusion at last, and gave a little roll of her eyes. “ _Nero_. I grew up worshiping a devil lord in a cult run by demons. Then I was kidnapped by them and used as a battery to power an enormous infernal construct. I am currently sharing a bedroom with two toddlers who produce lightning when they throw tantrums, and a man who periodically sprouts wings and horns because his grandfather was one of the most powerful devils in history. Having a book from the underworld in the room is just…”

“An average Friday?” Lady grinned. “It’s fine, Nero. The book is harmless on its own. Just don’t go drawing any of the diagrams in blood and reading the poetry aloud, because that’s when things start getting messy.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He braced himself and hefted the briefcase again. “ _Man_ , is this thing heavy. We could tie it to Rosso’s ankle and use it as an anchor to keep him from climbing the furniture.”

Lady’s eyebrows arched. “Does that happen often? I didn’t think babies that small could climb very well.”

“They’re not that small any more,” Kyrie sighed. “They’re growing fast. We don’t know why.”

“You might as well come up and see them.” Nero lugged the case toward the stairs. “Just… leave some clearance behind me, because if this thing starts to fall, I can’t stop it.”

They reached the top of the stairs without incident, and Nero stood back to let Kyrie approach the door first. “Be ready to grab anything that moves. They haven’t figured out how to climb out of the playpen yet, but we expect it any day.”

Fortunately, the toddlers were still contained in their playpen, though as soon as the door opened they began clamoring to be rescued from it. Nero stowed the briefcase in the closet and closed the door before joining Kyrie and Lady beside the playpen.

“Now, boys, quiet down. How do we ask to be picked up?” Kyrie asked patiently.

“Peas,” said Zaffiro. Kyrie lifted him out and handed him to Nero. Rosso sulked for a moment before letting out a reluctant, “peas.” Kyrie scooped him up and propped him on her hip. He stuck his fingers in his mouth and gave Lady a curious look.

“You’re right. They are _definitely_ bigger than they were last week,” Lady said. “Which is strange, given what I’ve been learning about the Nilepoch.”

“Which is?”

“I’m working from an incomplete translation; I just decoded enough of the book to be certain that it was talking about the demon we were looking for. But from what little I’ve read, the Nilepoch drains life from its victims.”

Nero frowned. “Like some kinda vampire?”

“Not exactly. If I’ve read correctly, it steals the life they’ve lived. Their… life experience, if you will. It resets them back to infancy and uses the decades they’ve occupied to sustain itself.” Lady shook her head. “I don’t really understand it. I’m hoping there’s a more complete explanation in the rest of the text.”

“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.” Nero bounced Zaffiro in his arms. “So… if we put these guys right back where they were, they’re liable to make an issue of it.”

“But the other children will be back any minute,” Kyrie said. “We can’t turn them loose downstairs.”

“Hold on a minute. Let’s see if they can be bribed.” Lady vanished down the stairs and returned a moment later with one of the bags she’d brought. She dug out some sort of wheel-shaped toy with pictures of animals on it. Lady pressed a picture of a cow, and the toy emitted a tinny _moo_ sound. “This is the most annoying thing I’ve ever seen. Dante should love it.”

Indeed, Rosso was staring at the toy, fascinated. Lady set it in the playpen, and he reached for it so insistently that he nearly toppled after it. Kyrie set him down, and Rosso began poking buttons experimentally. A cacophony of battery-powered animal sounds filled the room.

“That’s not gonna get old when we’re trying to sleep,” Nero muttered.

“You don’t have to let him keep it overnight,” Lady laughed. “Now, let’s see… What do you suppose Vergil would like?”

“Got any baby books of Romantic-era poetry?” Nero suggested dryly. “ _Songs of Innocence for the Age of Innocence,_ maybe?”

“Oh, hush,” Kyrie chided, laughing.

“Let’s try this.” Lady unwrapped a waterproof board book. “I think this is actually meant for use in the bath, but at least that means it’s impervious to baby drool.” She showed the pages to Zaffiro, who stared intently at the colorful illustrations, and put the book in his hands once Nero had placed him back in the playpen.

“Now we escape while they’re distracted,” Nero whispered. They hurried out and closed the door.

They had only just reached the living room when the older children returned home. “Miss Lady!” Kyle cheered as he burst in. “I saw your motorcycle!”

“Miss Lady!” Flavia ducked past the boys and threw her arms around Lady’s knees. “I practice cartwheel every day! I show you how good I am now!”

Lady carefully extricated herself from the four-year-old’s grasp and patted her on the head. “That’s excellent! You can show me a little later, okay, sweetie?”

“Miss Lady has brought some wonderful gifts for us, and for the orphanage,” Kyrie announced. “Everyone hurry and change, and you can help me sort them.” She waited until the children had pelted down the hall before turning to Nero. “Quickly, we need to move these books back to the garage. I don’t want the children looking through them.”

“On it.” Nero opened the garage door and carried a load of Order research materials out. Lady followed with another box.

As Nero arranged the boxes against the wall, Lady crept to the overhead door and paused, listening. Nero was just about to ask what she was doing when she held up a hand to request silence and crouched by the lock release. In a single motion, she threw back the bolt and hauled up on the handle. The door rolled up on its track, and Lady ducked beneath it and burst out into the sunlight. “Excuse me,” Nero heard her call, followed by a more distant voice answering.

The voices faded, and Nero watched Lady’s boots meander from one side of the driveway to the other before he ducked beneath the half-open door to join her. Apart from a stooped man hobbling away down the sidewalk, the area was deserted. “What was that about?”

“I don’t know.” Lady crossed her arms and scanned the street again. “I thought I heard someone outside.”

“Well, it is a public street.”

She shook her head. “Not passing. There was a scratching sound on the door. I asked that guy with the cane if he’d seen anything, but he hadn’t.”

Suddenly mindful of the break-in Kyrie had described, Nero crouched to examine the lock plate. “Damn it!”

“What?” Lady knelt beside him. “Did you find something?”

“One of the screws is loose.” Nero finger-tightened the hardware, then ducked into the garage in search of a screwdriver. “Kyrie said someone broke in a couple weeks ago. Looks like they’re trying again.”

“You need me to sleep out here in case they come back?” Lady flashed a wicked smile. “Kalina Ann makes a hell of a deterrent.”

“It might be hard to explain the explosions to the neighbors.” Nero finished securing the screw and tossed the tool back in a tray. “I’ll just have to add a second lock on the inside, I guess.”

“Failing that, you could always wire a car battery to the lock. Give your wannabe burglar a nasty shock for their trouble.”

Nero shot her a sideways look. “Remind me to stay on your good side.”

* * *

After dinner, the entire household gathered in the living room for homework time, as usual. Nero was giving Julio pointers on a tricky math problem while Kyrie, whose grasp of Italian far surpassed Nero’s, helped Scipio with his vocabulary words.

Lady, exempt from homework duty but not from family togetherness, was lounging on the sofa with a magazine when Flavia crawled up beside her. “Can I sit with you?” the little girl asked, already settling in.

“Sure,” Lady replied. She pointed to the picture book in the girl’s lap, one of the new ones she’d brought. “Are you going to read, too?”

Flavia nodded, and Lady went back to her magazine. Nero watched as the little girl mouthed each word as she read. She was making good progress with her English, he noted. Perhaps it was because she was younger than Scipio, or perhaps she just enjoyed reading more than her brother did.

A few pages in, Flavia frowned and patted Lady’s thigh. “Miss Lady?”

Lady glanced over. “Yes?”

“What means this word?” Flavia pointed.

Lady’s eyes skimmed the page. “Sis? It’s short for sister. ‘Big Sis’ is another way of saying ‘older sister.’”

“Ah. _Sorella maggiore_. Big Sis,” Flavia said quietly to herself. “ _Come Gianna_.”

From the other side of the room came a _snap_ as Scipio slammed his pencil down on the coffee table. “ _Gianna non_ _è più nostra sorella!_ ” he barked.

Flavia’s lower lip jutted out. “ _Lei_ _è!_ ”

“ _No! Non abbiamo una sorella!_ ” Kyrie tried to calm him, but Scipio shoved away from the table and bolted down the hall to the bedroom, leaving the other boys staring after him with wide eyes.

Kyrie sighed as she got to her feet. “I’ll talk to him,” she said. “You look after Flavia.”

Nero moved to sit on the other side of Flavia from Lady. Tears were pooling in the little girl’s eyes, and she clutched the book so tightly her fingers had turned white. “Hey,” Nero tried. “It’s okay.”

It was not okay, as Flavia made clear a second later when she burst into tears. Lady shot him a look over Flavia’s head. “Nice one,” she murmured. “Got any other helpful platitudes?”

Nero was saved from answering as Flavia chose that moment to throw herself into Lady’s lap, bawling something in incomprehensible Italian. In spite of the sensitive situation, Nero nearly laughed at the look of panic that crossed Lady’s face. She tentatively put her arms around the little girl, which was apparently what Flavia needed. After a minute or two the wails subsided into wet sniffles.

“There, that’s better.” Nero patted Flavia on the back. “Come on, let’s go wash your face.”

Flavia remained horizontal in Lady’s lap, but twisted her head back and forth in a negative.

“I think you’ll feel better if you rinse your face,” he tried again. “Don’t you want to feel better?”

A hesitant nod.

“Come with me to the bathroom, then.”

Head-shake.

Nero gnawed his lip for a moment, then realized how tightly the child was still clinging to Lady. “Do you want Miss Lady to help you wash your face?”

A nod.

Lady looked at Nero as though he’d just offered to push her in front of a bus, but she dutifully rose to the challenge. “All right, little miss, let’s go wash your face.”

Flavia sniffed heavily as she came upright, but turned her tear-reddened eyes up toward Lady. “Little miss?” she echoed.

“It means ‘young lady.’”

“Ah.” Flavia managed a hesitant smile. “Lady. Like you?”

Lady laughed gently. “That’s right. Like me.”


	14. Chapter 14

Kyrie had a cup of tea waiting for Lady when she returned to the house late Saturday morning. “Thank you,” Lady said fervently, downing half the cup in one go. “Not that there was much chance of it happening at this point, but this morning has reaffirmed my decision never to have kids.”

“Oh, you’d manage just fine even if you did,” Kyrie laughed. “By all reports, you handled Flavia very well last night.” She selected a couple of quiet baby toys from the bag Lady had brought and handed them to the twins. Nero had closed up several boxes of books and stacked them in an L-shape to block off a corner of the living room for Rosso and Zaffiro, who seemed to be enjoying the change of scenery. “Everyone made it to the park all right, I assume?”

Lady nodded and dropped into the armchair. “When I left, the boys were setting up a soccer game. Excuse me—a _football_ game. And Flavia had me observe about eight hundred and forty-six cartwheels, and then wanted me to teach her how to somersault. Which I did.” She reached up and tugged a wisp of grass out of her hair. “I’m going to feel that in the morning.”

“Well, at least it should keep them all busy for a while.” Nero leaned forward and pushed the briefcase over toward Lady. “But not forever, so let’s get started on this thing.”

Lady finished her tea, then unlocked the case. Nero wasn’t sure what he’d expected—black smoke, or a malevolent hiss, or something duly ominous—but within the briefcase, padded around the edges with crumpled newspaper, lay a mundane-looking brown book about the size of a telephone directory. “So what is this thing, anyway?” he asked.

“Near as I can tell, it’s a book on how specialized demons are created.” With a grunt of effort, Lady tipped the case sideways, and the book flopped out onto the hardwood with a furniture-rattling impact. “The powerful ones—high-ranking devils on par with Sparda, or Mundus—apparently possess the power to create demonic minions and imbue them with certain abilities.”

“Like Trish.”

“Exactly. And this book is a sort of recipe guide, I think. It documents some of the more unique demons that have been created over the eons, and describes how they were made. Complete with do-it-yourself kit.” She heaved open the book, and the exposed pages displayed complex diagrams covered in arcane symbols. “Don’t look too closely at the ingredient lists, though. A lot of these required human sacrifices, and to achieve different effects, they had to be… prepared in certain ways.” She looked a little queasy at the recollection. “And whatever you’re imagining, it’s worse, so _seriously_ , don’t read them.”

“Message received.” Nero moved to her vacated spot in the armchair so he could peer over her shoulder. “But the Nilepoch is in here?”

“I’m pretty sure.” Lady turned the pages back to where a slip of newspaper was tucked between them. “Does this look familiar?”

The illustration on the page was stylized, but there was no mistaking the creeping vapors, nor the sphere of energy in the beast’s mouth. “That’s it. That’s definitely what I saw.”

Kyrie slid closer to look. “It’s hideous!”

“Most demons aren’t very pretty to look at.” Nero grinned. “Human hybrids are another matter, of course.”

Lady arched an eyebrow. “You’d better add an exception for Trish, if you want to _stay_ that pretty.”

“Uh, yeah. Her, too.” He squinted at the text. “So what language is this in, anyway? It looks like a medieval manuscript.”

“It’s a lot older than that. The language is usually referred to as the Abyssal Tongue. It’s related to Latin, which makes it possible to translate, but first we have to decode the writing.” Lady fished through the crumpled newspaper in the briefcase and retrieved a couple of smaller books, little more than pamphlets. “Here are the keys. I traded for them a while back, while doing some research on another project, and they’ve come in handy. It’s a phonetic alphabet, so once we have a transliteration, we can start on the actual translating.”

Nero glanced at Kyrie, then back at Lady. “Do you know Latin?”

Lady sighed. “Not well. But I was raised Catholic, and I brought a Latin-English dictionary. I’ve managed to translate a few short lines before. We’ll figure it out.”

“Just a minute.” Kyrie knelt beside the book and stared at it thoughtfully. “I’ve seen this writing before.”

Lady’s eyebrows climbed. “You have?”

Kyrie nodded. “In one of the books from the Order. I was helping Nero look through them. I think it was in that last box. Nero, do you know which boxes we looked through yesterday?”

“You would ask me that after I built the Great Wall of Baby Containment out of them.” Nero frowned at the stacked boxes. “I think it’s these, on the bottom. Can you corral the kids for a minute?”

Kyrie climbed over the pile of boxes to entertain the twins while Nero dismantled part of the barricade and restacked it with the boxes they needed on top. “Okay, it’s in one of these four.”

Kyrie sorted through the volumes until she found the one she was looking for. “Here it is!” she said brightly. “I think this book must be an interlinear translation. See, there are two columns—one in that language, and another in Italian. The lines are numbered.” She read for a moment. “The wording is a bit archaic, but I can understand it well enough. We can at least use it as a reference.”

“So we’re going to have to translate this from Abyssal to Latin to English by way of Italian?” Nero shook his head. “This couldn’t be easy, could it.”

“Just be glad we have Kyrie, because the only Italian phrase I know is _dov'_ _è il bagno_.” Lady patted the floor beside her. “Come on, we have four whole pages to work through. Let’s get started.”

* * *

It took the rest of the morning to transliterate the passage, but with Kyrie’s guidance, the process became less daunting than Nero had feared. She saved them some time by isolating several common words in the interlinear text, so the translation became more like a jigsaw puzzle than a reading exercise. Nero looked up the Abyssal symbols for the words they didn’t know while Lady flipped between sections in the Latin dictionary, alternately looking up word definitions and checking the grammar guide.

Just after noon they broke for lunch, with Nero hauling the book and their translation materials back upstairs to keep them out of sight of the children, who returned full of enthusiastic stories of their morning’s adventures in the park. Flavia ran up to Lady, beaming. “Miss Lady! I showed Kyle the somersault, and now he can do!”

“That’s great!” Lady said. “You keep that up, and you could be a gymnastics coach when you grow up.”

Flavia shook her head. “I want to be _un_ _astronauta._ I will go to the moon!”

Lady grinned. “Well, I’m sure that requires a lot of physical training, too, so keep up your practice.”

Kyrie reappeared from upstairs, where she’d been putting the twins down for a nap. “Who’s ready for some lunch?”

“Me!” chorused half a dozen voices.

“Who has washed their hands?”

There was a stampede for the bathroom. Nero and Lady followed Kyrie into the kitchen. “Anything I can do to help?” Lady asked as Nero began to set the table.

Kyrie took the lid off a large pot and stirred the savory vegetable soup within. “No, this is just about ready. Oh! The bread still needs sliced.” She pointed to a cloth-wrapped loaf on the counter. “The bread knife is in the drawer on the left. We’ll need eight slices. And you can save the ends for Rosso and Zaffiro. I’ll feed them after their nap.”

Lady unwrapped the bread and shamelessly inhaled the fresh-baked smell. “Kyrie, I don’t know how you find the time to bake and cook and take care of all these kids. Don’t you ever sleep?”

“There’s a lot of multitasking involved,” she laughed. “And Nero helps me around the house, too. Something like soup is easy, though. I just put the ingredients in the pot and come back later.” She began to ladle the contents of the pot into eight mismatched bowls.

The kids filed back in with freshly-scrubbed hands and took their places around the table, leaving one chair open. Nero glanced between Lady and Kyrie. “Okay, one of you, sit.”

“Lady’s our guest,” Kyrie said, at the same moment that Lady said, “Kyrie made lunch.” They looked at each other and laughed.

“Go on,” Lady said, waving Kyrie to the seat. “I’ve been sitting on the floor all morning; it actually feels good to stand.”

Kyrie acquiesced, and Julio looked over with interest. “What did you do this morning?”

The three adults exchanged glances. “We’ve been doing some research,” Lady said after a brief pause.

“Is that why you have all those books?” Carlo asked.

“Some of them,” Nero said, and hastily added, “But a lot of those books are Nico’s. We’re just storing them for her. She probably wouldn’t like it if anyone looked through them without permission, so don’t open any of the boxes.”

“I can help you research, if you want,” Julio offered.

Nero hesitated. He didn’t want Julio anywhere near their translation project, but it was difficult to find an excuse to turn him down. He knew his confidence about the disaster that had befallen his father and uncle had made Julio eager to help out. “Let’s see how things are going after lunch,” he said. “We may all want a break from the books for a while.”

By the time they were finished eating, the sky had clouded over to a twilight gray, and thunder rumbled ominously in the distance. “I guess we can’t go back to the park,” sighed Kyle. He twisted to look up at Kyrie. “Can we play with our new toys that Miss Lady brought?”

“Hey, I have a better idea,” Nero said suddenly. “You know all that stuff Lady brought for the orphanage? Why don’t you all get your raincoats and umbrellas, and you can help me deliver it!”

Carlo frowned. “In the rain?”

“Yep. If you pair off and one of you holds an umbrella while the other carries a bag, it’ll be fine. Besides, then you can see how happy it makes them to get all the presents.”

The children filed off to get their rain gear, and Nero leaned over to Lady and Kyrie. “Look, you guys are obviously the brains of this operation. I’ll keep the kids occupied at the orphanage for as long as possible, and you can keep working on the translation.”

“That should work,” Lady said. “Where did you put the books?”

“On our bed. Well, except for the big book. It’s on the floor. Do you need me to bring it down?”

“I don’t think so. We copied out the text, so we can work from that for now.”

“Okay. I’ll bring down the rest for you. I’ve gotta run up and get Blue Rose, anyway.”

Kyrie frowned. “Are you sure you need to carry a weapon? It’s the middle of the day, and the children…”

“With all the weird stuff that’s been happening lately, I’d feel better having some way to protect them that doesn’t involve popping out wings and claws in front of them.”

“All right. Just try not to let them see you carrying it. I’d rather not have them worried.”

Nero grabbed his own jacket from the closet and, once upstairs, secured Blue Rose beneath it. By the time he returned, the children were lined up by the front door, umbrellas in hand. Lady was distributing the shopping bags to be delivered to the orphanage.

“Take your time,” Kyrie called after them as they trooped out into the drizzle. “Just be back in time for dinner.”

* * *

The children spent two afternoons a week at the orphanage for after-school activities, so they knew the path well. Nero followed along behind them, scanning the perimeter for anything suspicious and making sure the bags of gifts stayed mostly dry under the umbrellas once the rain started. When they reached the ancient building, a paragon of white stone behind an imposing metal gate, the children pelted up the walk to the heavy iron-banded doors with all the enthusiasm of an outing to the playground.

Nero hung back, staring up at the edifice with rather less enthusiasm. He’d spent his entire childhood here, except for occasional outings to visit Kyrie and her family. It wasn’t until after her parents had died and Credo, several years older and her legal guardian, had agreed to take Nero in that he’d known any home other than the sterile dormitory with its lime-washed walls and creaking bunk beds. The sisters tried their best, but life under the Order’s oversight had been strict and austere, and since the collapse of its founding organization, the orphanage had struggled. Without fixed financial support, the building was beginning to suffer in places from neglect. Kyrie had told him that one entire wing had never reopened after it had been severely damaged in the tremors from The Savior’s collapse.

Some part of Nero recognized that this place was part of his own heritage, responsible for sheltering and raising him, and he should probably be helping out more with the maintenance and repairs. But a larger and more pragmatic part reminded him that his own roof was only one bad storm away from collapsing, and he had a finite amount of time and energy. He’d have to settle for helping when—and how—he was able.

By the time Nero made it inside the building, Sister Benedicta, the orphanage’s headmistress, had already corralled the children and was directing them where to put their dripping umbrellas. “Welcome, Nero,” she greeted him in her usual somber manner. Sister Benedicta still adhered to the tenets she’d practiced for decades, garbed in the simple robe and hood the Order had once mandated, and she was no more liberal with her emotions than with her mode of dress. Nero had known the woman his entire life, and while she was far from unkind, he had rarely seen her smile.

“Got a special delivery,” Nero said. “Friend brought us a load of kid supplies from the mainland, and we thought the orphanage could use some.”

Sister Benedicta nodded. “I am grateful that you thought of us. Come along, children, and let’s take the bags into the dining hall.”

The dining hall was a high-ceilinged space filled with trestle tables that also served as classroom, workshop space, and general assembly point for the orphanage. A few older children sat near the windows, reading or drawing. They looked over at the new arrivals with mild curiosity, but returned to their work when they recognized the group.

The bags, now slightly damp, were hefted onto one of the tables, and the children took great joy in displaying their treasures. “Look what we brought!” squeaked Kyle, waving a package of crib sheets.

Not to be outdone, Scipio pulled a baby bottle out of his bag. “We bring many things.”

“My friend Miss Lady gave us,” Flavia said proudly.

Sister Benedicta canted her head at that. “Miss Lady? I think you must have misunderstood, my dear.”

Flavia looked uncertain, and Nero jumped in to rescue her. “Nope, she’s right. Her name really is Lady.”

“How unusual,” Sister Benedicta remarked.

“She rides a custom motorcycle,” Carlo added.

“And she taught us to summer salts!” Kyle burst.

“Somersault,” Nero laughed. “All one word, kiddo.”

“And cartwheel,” Flavia beamed. “She is Miss Lady. I am Little Miss.”

“I see.” Sister Benedicta took this in stride and turned to address all of the children. “Thank you for bringing these things, children. They will be put to good use. And please pass on my thanks to your friend… Miss Lady.” Her lips pursed at the uncommon name.

Nero could see that she was on the verge of dismissing them, but he wanted to give Kyrie and Lady as much time as possible to translate the manuscript. “Hey, as long as we’re here, is there anything else we can help with? I thought we might wait a while and see if the rain lets up before heading back.”

“Well…” Sister Benedicta hesitated. “I don’t want to impose on you, but… do you still tinker with mechanical devices?”

Nero pinched his tongue between his molars to suppress his reaction. He’d customized Red Queen’s ignition system at the age of seventeen, and a year later he’d engineered Blue Rose from scratch, milling the parts himself in a ramshackle workshop. It was hardly _tinkering_. “Yeah, I still do some work. Why?”

“We’ve been having some trouble with the boiler. The burner isn’t firing. I thought perhaps you might be able to tell us what’s wrong.”

Nero frowned. “It’s not that decrepit oil-fired system you had when I was here, is it?”

Sister Benedicta nodded. “It’s never been replaced in my time here.”

“Um. Wow.” Nero ran a hand through his hair. “That thing already had to be forty years old back when I was a kid. I mean, I’ll take a look at it, but it may have just died of old age. Eventually the mechanical pieces wear out, and I doubt you’ll be able to find replacement parts for something that ancient.”

“Oh, dear.” A crease formed between the headmistress’s brows. “I know we haven’t the resources to purchase a new boiler.”

“Well, let me poke at it. Maybe it’s just air in the line, or something. And if you do need parts, I’ve got a friend that can custom-manufacture just about anything. She’s not cheap, but it’ll still cost a lot less than installing a whole new system.”

Sister Benedicta looked relieved. “I would appreciate it if you could give us your opinion.”

“Sure thing.” Nero glanced back at the children, who were watching expectantly. “You guys good to entertain yourselves for a while?”

Julio frowned. “Can’t we come watch you fix it? I’ve never seen a boiler.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Until I figure out what’s wrong, I don’t want you within range of any… mishaps.” He decided most of the children were too young to be told how deadly a boiler explosion could be; they didn’t need one more random thing to be worried about. “Tell you what: If it turns out it’s nothing dangerous, I’ll take you downstairs to look at it when I’m done working— _if_ you’re good while you wait, and _if_ you promise not to touch anything down there. Deal?”

“Deal!” the children chorused, before wandering off to where the classroom supplies were stored. Julio found a book, Flavia went for the crayons, and the other boys began looking through a stack of games and puzzles.

“They’re good children,” Sister Benedicta said suddenly. “You and Kyrie should be proud.”

Nero flushed at the unexpected praise. “We try our best. It gets a little crazy sometimes, though. I sometimes think we bit off more than we can chew. Especially now.”

The headmistress nodded and beckoned for Nero to follow her as she headed for the basement access. “Kyrie told me you’d taken in two infants. She was somewhat vague about where they came from, though.” Her sharp eyes angled toward him.

Nero considered putting her off, but he didn’t want to alienate his best resource for advice on child rearing. Besides, she’d had an active hand in raising him; he owed her at least as much honesty as he’d given Julio. “They’re family.”

“Family?” Sister Benedicta stopped walking to stare at him. “I thought Credo was Kyrie’s only living relative.”

“Not hers. Mine.”

“You mean you—” Her eyes widened. “But who is their mother? I thought you and Kyrie were…”

“ _No!_ No, no, nothing like that.” Nero laughed weakly. “I just mean they’re my relatives. I haven’t told many people, but I kinda… met my father last summer.”

“Oh!” She looked relieved, then surprised. “But we were never able to learn anything about your origins! How did you find him?”

“It was more a case of me being found. Turns out the white hair and blue eyes run in the family.” _Among other things,_ he thought, recalling the arc of Yamato’s power coursing through him that day in Agnus’s lab. “My uncle spotted me and put two and two together. I guess my old man hadn’t even known about me.”

“So you found your family at last.” She displayed a rare smile. “I’m so pleased for you. I know how badly you wanted answers about your heritage.”

“And boy, did those turn out to be more than I bargained for.” Nero shook his head. “Anyway, my father and uncle got into some trouble recently, and I was the only one available to take care of the twins. So there it is.”

“Well, if you need any assistance with them, don’t hesitate to call on us. I know you have a full house already, and I worry about Kyrie working herself to exhaustion. That girl is a veritable force of nature, but she always puts others’ needs before her own.”

Sister Benedicta was just unlocking the door to the basement when a frantic voice echoed through the halls. “Sister Benedicta!” They turned and saw another woman in robes dashing toward them.

The headmistress stepped forward in alarm as the woman approached. “Sister Gratia, what’s wrong? Is someone hurt?”

Sister Gratia staggered to a halt and clutched at Nero’s arm as she gasped for air. “Nero… glad you’re here! I was… just going to call for you.” She coughed, the breath rattling in her chest, before drawing herself upright and tugging him to follow her. “Quickly… behind the building!”

Sister Benedicta arrested the pair’s forward motion with a hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “Sister Gratia, please, calm down and explain yourself!”

“Demons,” she panted. “Coming straight for the orphanage!”

Nero didn’t wait for more information; he took off at a run toward the nearest access to the back garden. It happened to be through the dining hall, and the children looked up as he dashed into view. “ _Do not_ leave the building!” he shouted at them as he ran. “Stay away from the windows!” He heard the sisters behind him and trusted that they would look after the kids. After all, demon attacks were nothing new; he’d faced plenty of them from the time he was a teenager. Just because the youngest generation of orphans hadn’t been subjected to that horror didn’t mean the sisters had forgotten how to deal with what had once been a frequent threat.

Nero burst out into the drizzle and instantly tasted drifting ash in the air. Something had already killed at least one demon—perhaps a lucky shot from some local resident’s firearm. But there were a half-dozen tottering figures coming at him across the lawn, and he couldn’t trust that whoever had taken out the first demon would hit their mark again. He reached under his coat for Blue Rose as the hair on his neck and arms rose with the energy of combat.

Three double-shots into the first Scarecrow’s face turned it to dust; the next demon slammed into the ground with brutal force as he kicked into the air and aimed his drop to flatten it. He palmed a third with his devil-powered right arm, whirled it around, then flung it into a fourth before reloading Blue Rose and blasting them both to pieces. Number five tried to slash at him, but he dodged, gripped its bladed appendage in one hand and its head in the other, and tore it in half. It disintegrated to ash in his fists.

He glanced around for the final demon and saw it hobbling toward the door he’d exited. “Aw, _hell_ no,” Nero hissed. He extended the spectral shadow of his right arm— _damn_ , it felt good to have that power again—and hauled the Scarecrow back toward him. A boot to the back of one burlap leg brought the Scarecrow to its knees, or whatever served for joints, and a shot from Blue Rose through the head-like sack finished the job.

Nero turned in a circle, waiting for the next wave of enemies, but nothing else came. He jogged around the perimeter, squinted against the drizzle for the tell-tale swirl in the air that signified a portal, even hopped up onto the stone walls surrounding the garden and searched the neighboring yards, but there was no sign of more demonic activity.

“Huh,” he said aloud. “That was… unexpectedly short.” This was one of the easiest fights he’d had in months. The Scarecrows were weak enemies, hardly worth the effort he’d put into destroying them. Why had they appeared _here_ , of all places?

He was just about to return to the building when something in the mud near the center of the garden caught his eye. He went to it and crouched for a better look. “ _Shit_.”

A flash of movement in his peripheral vision had him snapping Blue Rose up again, but before he could find a target, it had vanished into the trees beyond the garden wall.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Nero stormed back into the orphanage, ignoring the questions flung at him by various members of staff. “I need to use your phone,” he announced to Sister Benedicta, and entered her office without waiting for a reply. He’d already punched out his home number by the time the headmistress slipped into the room behind him, closing the door to block out the anxious voices from the hall.

Kyrie answered, but Nero didn’t have time to fill her in on what had happened. “Hey, it’s me. Put Lady on, will you? It’s urgent.” Lady’s voice reached his ear a moment later. “I need you at the orphanage, as soon as you can possibly get here. Come armed. We’ve got a problem.”


	15. Chapter 15

“Well, you’re right.” Lady rose from the ground and attempted to brush the clinging mud from her chaps. “A lot of the detail has been washed away, but there’s no mistaking the shape of that circle.”

“Which is what, exactly?” Sister Benedicta stood a few paces away, sheltered by an umbrella. Nero considered the look on her face and thought the protective accessory was unnecessary: Any raindrop would have to be suicidal to land on her, given the heat she was radiating just now. She tolerated Nero’s weapons because of his past as a Holy Knight of the Order, but she had _not_ been keen on a woman sporting leather microshorts, grenades, and a shoulder-fired missile launcher barging into her haven for young children.

“It’s an arcane sigil called a Solomon’s Noose.” Lady seemed unfazed by the headmistress’s disapproval. “It’s not a sophisticated technique, but it does the job.”

“And what job would that be?”

“Summoning demons.”

A little of the color drained from Sister Benedicta’s face. “You mean… someone did this on purpose?”

“Very much on purpose.” Lady fixed her with a level gaze. “Someone summoned those Scarecrows. Right here, and very recently. Someone _wanted_ this orphanage attacked. So if I were you, I’d start making a list of people who could benefit by hurting you, the kids, or this facility.”

The headmistress’s brow furrowed, but after a moment she shook her head. “I can’t think of anyone. We’ve no money, no real property to speak of. The children are all orphans. The building was deeded to us by the Order, but it’s not valuable—in fact, there are abandoned properties worth far more all over the city.”

“Could it have been one of the kids?” Nero asked. “The ruins of the castle are full of all kinds of books and things on demons. If one of them went exploring, they could have found instructions on how to summon one.”

“I should hope none of our children would ever do such a thing.” Sister Benedicta sighed. “Though some of them are troubled, and anger or sadness can take many forms of expression. But you said you didn’t see anyone out here?”

“Not in the garden.” He wasn’t sure what, if anything, he’d seen vanishing into the woods. “But someone might have had time to get over the wall or back inside between the time Sister Gratia reported the demons and I got out here.”

She nodded. “I’ll ask the staff, and see if anyone saw a child returning to the building just before the alarm was raised.”

“And it might be a good idea to have someone keep watch for a few days, in case whoever it was tries something else,” Lady added. “If the culprit is smart, they’ll lie low for a while, but you don’t want to rely on that.”

The group returned to the building, where Sister Gratia and Nero’s kids were clustered in a worried knot near the door. The resident children had all been sent back to their dormitories to take shelter when the alarm had sounded, but he’d been told that his group had been hustled to safety in a janitorial closet by the sisters. Fear still lingered on their faces, and Kyle and Flavia’s cheeks bore the traces of tears.

Nero hated seeing them scared. “Hey, that was exciting, wasn’t it?” he said brightly. “It’s not every day you get to practice a storm drill!”

His bluster didn’t fool Julio for a second. “But it wasn’t a drill, was it?” The boy’s face was pale, and his hands were locked around Carlo and Kyle’s smaller ones.

“No, it wasn’t,” Nero admitted. “But it’s all over now. You guys ready to go home?”

“Is it safe to go outdoors?” whispered Carlo.

“Of course.” Nero knelt to his eye level and grinned. “But I’m gonna send Lady along with you, just so you won’t have anything to worry about.”

All the children looked alarmed at that. “You aren’t coming with us?” asked Julio.

“I’ve still gotta fix that boiler, remember? But I don’t know how long that will take, and Kyrie wants you home in time for dinner, so I want you guys to go back with Lady now. I’ll catch up after I’m done. Okay?”

A look at their faces told him it was decidedly _not_ okay, but they followed Sister Gratia to retrieve their coats and umbrellas when prompted. Lady drew Nero aside. “You want me to leave you some extra firepower, just in case?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think we’ll see any more trouble here, and I’m still packing plenty of rounds. If all else fails, I have natural weapons to fall back on.” He flexed his right hand meaningfully. “If you can, fill Kyrie in on what happened, but don’t let the kids hear you talking about demons. And make sure she knows everyone is _fine_. She’s an Olympic-caliber worrier.”

“Will do.” They joined the children wriggling into raincoats. Lady knelt by Flavia, who was struggling with the toggles on her vinyl jacket. “Hey, Little Miss, let me help you with that.”

Flavia allowed Lady to fasten her coat. “Can I hold your hand to go home?” she whispered.

“Of course you can.” Lady pulled the oversized hood up, then deliberately tugged it low over the little girl’s face. “Oh, no! Where did Flavia go?”

Flavia giggled and pushed the hood back. “You are silly,” she chided.

“I’ve been called worse.” Lady winked and stood. “Okay, squad, let’s get organized! Everyone got their buddy?”

Scipio frowned up at her. “What’s a buddy?”

“What? You mean Nero hasn’t introduced you to the Buddy System yet?” Lady took Flavia’s hand and led the group toward the door, keeping the children focused on her with the string of upbeat chatter. “Okay, everyone line up by twos. I’ll teach you about buddies on the way back.”

Sister Benedicta moved to stand beside Nero as they filed out into the rain, a collection of bright raincoats and dark umbrellas against the gray. “I admit I had my doubts when I first saw her, but she does seem capable.”

Nero nodded. “She’s one of the best demon hunters in the business.”

The headmistress arched an eyebrow. “I was referring to her skill with children. Though I’m sure she’s proficient at that, as well.” She let out a faint sigh. “But would it be too much to ask for her to wear a proper pair of trousers?”

* * *

It was full dark by the time Nero left the orphanage, and in the absence of reliable streetlights in their part of the city, he was grateful that one of the attributes his devil heritage had bestowed upon him was slightly more acute low-light vision. He couldn’t quite see in the dark the way full demons could, but the faint light bouncing off the clouds from the rest of the city made it possible for him to avoid the larger potholes and broken sections of pavement.

The children had already retired to their bedrooms, but he found Kyrie and Lady waiting for him in the living room when he entered. Kyrie immediately stood and threw her arms around him. “I was so worried,” she sighed.

Nero exchanged a look with Lady over Kyrie’s shoulder. “Everything’s fine. Nobody was hurt. And hey, I even got the boiler working again. Turns out the ignition relay was just full of gunk, so no replacement necessary. That probably saved the orphanage half a year’s funding.”

“Thank you for fixing it.” Kyrie released him from the embrace, but remained close. “Have you eaten?”

“Yeah, they fed me.” He pulled a face. “Now _that_ was a flashback to a time in my life I don’t miss. I had forgotten how bland those meals were.”

Lady looked surprised. “You used to live at the orphanage?”

Nero returned the same expression. “You didn’t know that? I was a _bona fide_ left-on-the-doorstep foundling.”

“I guess I hadn’t really thought about where you lived. For some reason I thought you and Kyrie grew up together.”

“We did.” Kyrie led Nero to the couch and sat beside him. “My mother volunteered at the orphanage, so we spent a lot of time together as children. But after my parents died, I persuaded my older brother to let Nero come live with us.” She smiled at the memory. “It didn’t take much to convince him. I think Credo was bothered by how quiet the house was with just the two of us.”

Nero chuckled. “And after I moved in, it was never quiet again.”

“That’s true. Remember how you two used to fight over the stereo?” Kyrie laughed. “Credo once bought Nero a pair of very expensive headphones, on the condition that he had to use them any time he wanted to listen to music in the house. He hated modern music.”

“And by ‘modern,’ he meant anything produced in the last century,” Nero added.

They laughed together, but the memory was bittersweet, and Kyrie’s hand soon found Nero’s. Credo had been a brother to both of them, and his loss was still keenly felt.

Lady seemed to sense the shift in mood, and quickly diverted the conversation before it could grow too heavy. “So, Nero, it turns out Kyrie is the _real_ brains of this operation, because she had most of that passage translated by the time I got back with the kids.”

“Really?” Nero brightened and turned to Kyrie. “I always said she had as much brains as looks.” He kissed her cheek.

“Oh, stop it.” Kyrie blushed a little. “I’m just good with languages.”

“And every other subject I would have failed without your tutoring me. So, what’s it say? Did we learn anything useful?”

“I’ll go get it from upstairs.” Kyrie stood and glanced down the hall. “Nero, can you make sure the children’s doors are closed all the way? I let them keep the lights on a little later than usual because they were so keyed up from what happened at the orphanage, but I don’t want them hearing our conversation.”

Flavia was asleep in the tiny room she had shared with Maria. Nero switched out the ceiling light and turned on the little night light by her bed, then closed the door and moved on to the boys’ room. Scipio and Kyle were already asleep as well, toys scattered over their bunks, but Carlo and Julio sat up at his entrance. “You’re home!” Carlo said, gracing him with a sleepy smile. Julio said nothing, but looked relieved.

“Hey,” Nero whispered. “Everybody doing okay?”

Julio nodded. “The little kids were scared to turn out the lights, so Kyrie said we could stay up and read for a while.”

“I wasn’t scared,” Carlo insisted through a yawn.

Nero removed a few toys from the sleeping children before turning to the bunks Carlo and Julio shared. “You guys ready for lights out? It’s pretty late.”

Carlo nodded and set his book on the floor beside his bed. He wriggled deep into the bedding, and from his deep yawns, Nero knew he would be asleep within moments. In the top bunk, Julio frowned at the cover of his own book. “Can I finish this chapter? I only have six pages left.”

“I guess that’s fine, since you don’t have school tomorrow. You’ve got your reading light up there? I’ll turn out the ceiling light so you don’t have to get down.” Julio nodded and switched on the little book light he’d gotten as a birthday gift. “Six pages, then lights out, okay?”

Julio nodded, but didn’t open his book again. “Nero…”

“Yeah?”

There was a pause before he asked, “Is Carlo asleep?”

Nero checked. “Seems to be. Why?”

Julio scraped a thumbnail over the corner of his paperback, fanning the pages meditatively. “What happened at the orphanage today…” The words were so quiet Nero could barely hear them. “The sisters said we had to take shelter because of severe weather, but it was only raining a little. They were lying, weren’t they?”

The unspoken _and so were you_ rang in the silence between them. “Yes. They didn’t want to scare you.”

“It’s a lot scarier when nobody will tell us the truth.” Julio stared down at the book for a few more seconds before setting it to one side. “Was it demons?” Nero’s breath hissed in surprise, but Julio just glared at the far wall. “I know adults think we’re too stupid to catch on, but I hear people talking.”

Nero glanced around the room at the other sleeping children. This was neither the time nor the place to have this conversation. He leaned closer to Julio. “Yes, it was demons, and nobody thinks you’re stupid. Kyrie and I have actually been talking about how to tell you… well, everything. And I promise we will, but not tonight, okay?”

Julio nodded reluctantly.

“Okay. We’ll talk about it real soon.” Nero handed him his discarded paperback. “Six pages, then lights out. I’ll see you in the morning.”

* * *

Kyrie and Lady were waiting for him in the living room. “You were gone a while,” Kyrie said. “Is everything all right with the kids?”

Nero sighed as he dropped onto the couch. “Yeah, but I think it’s about time to have The Talk with Julio.”

Lady’s eyebrows rose. “He’s that age already?”

“Not _that_ talk.” Nero rolled his eyes. “He knows there were demons at the orphanage, and he wants straight answers.”

Kyrie nodded. “I thought as much. He was awfully quiet tonight, but he seemed more thoughtful than afraid.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, why are you keeping the kids in the dark, anyway?” Lady frowned. “Especially here. I mean, I can understand people on the mainland pretending demons don’t exist, because the odds of them ever seeing one are extremely low. But there’s evidence on every street corner here.”

“A lot of it has to do with the fall of the Order,” Kyrie said. “Most of the people on Fortuna were the Order’s adherents, and even the ones who weren’t believers depended on the Order for their livelihoods in some way. When what happened… happened, the survivors had different reactions. Some were angry, and blamed the Order for causing the tragedy. Others remained firmly in denial.”

“That cover story about the earthquake was handed to the international media by what remained of the city officials, because they were hoping a natural disaster would net them some foreign aid to help rebuild the city, but they didn’t invent it themselves,” Nero put in. “The people who refused to believe that the Order’s leadership was corrupt were already trying to convince their neighbors that that was what had happened.”

“Plus, there were a lot of people traumatized by the disaster, both physically and emotionally. A lot of people died. Even more lost their homes. The social structure the Order had imposed for centuries was suddenly gone. Some people just weren’t able to cope with all of that. So many people were affected, it became an unwritten rule that you didn’t speak about what happened, except in the context of how to recover from it. You could discuss the need to rebuild a school, but not _why_ it needed to be rebuilt. People just wanted to move on, not focus on the mistakes of the past.”

“And to answer your question more directly, since the orphanage was originally run by the Order, none of the sisters want to badmouth their founders.” Nero smiled grimly. “So rather than force the kids to choose whether to believe us or the sisters, we just agreed not to talk about it until they were old enough to understand why there are so many conflicting stories going around.”

“But surely some of the kids remember what happened,” Lady said. “It was only six years ago. Julio is twelve, isn’t he?”

“Memory is pretty malleable when you’re that young.” Kyrie shrugged. “Julio remembers being scared, and hiding with his father in the basement, but if everyone says what he remembers is an earthquake, he’d have no reason to believe otherwise.”

“Except that he’s heard people talk, and he’s a smart enough kid to know when people are lying to him.” Nero glanced at the boxes of books stacked in the corner. “And I’m sure we’ve let things slip along the way. I mean, I try not to talk about work when the kids are around, but the van does have the word ‘devil’ on the side in bright blue neon.”

“Hmm. It’s too bad you didn’t have this talk with him a week ago,” Lady mused. “If you had, he could have helped us with some of this translation work.”

Nero shot her a dark look. “There’s a difference between saying, ‘yeah, demons are real,’ and handing a twelve-year-old kid a book full of recipes involving grotesque human sacrifice.”

“Fair point,” Lady conceded. She turned to Kyrie. “Anyway! Speaking of translation, let’s fill Nero in.”

“Right.” Kyrie smoothed the pages she’d decoded out on the coffee table. “The full text is a bit of a mess, and Lady was right; it does appear to be mostly about how this particular demon was made. But the interesting parts are what I’ve highlighted here.” She tapped a section marked in fluorescent yellow. “It seems that the Nilepoch was created by a demon lord named Kronoth as a means of keeping his rivals in check.”

“Keep in mind that demons don’t age the same way humans do,” Lady added. “They grow more powerful over time, and only die if killed by a more powerful demon.”

“Or a devil hunter.” Kyrie smiled. “Anyway, Kronoth served a devil lord named Mundus.”

“Of course he did,” Nero muttered.

“Yeah. Small underworld.” Lady shrugged. “I mean, it makes sense; Mundus pretty much ruled the underworld until Sparda took him down.”

Kyrie continued. “It seems Mundus explicitly forbade Kronoth from killing the other lords who served alongside him. So, wanting to advance in the ranks, Kronoth devised the Nilepoch to steal the power of his rivals without otherwise harming them.”

Nero frowned. “But we know this thing harms its victims. It killed all those kids.”

“All those _human_ kids,” Lady pointed out. “Who were very likely human _adults_ before it found them. This thing was designed to target a specific kind of demon; it may have a completely different effect on humans.”

Kyrie nodded. “This bit was tricky, but if I’m interpreting it correctly, the Nilepoch doesn’t inhabit its own timeline, exactly. It steals power from other demons, and then uses it to sort of slide forward to whatever point in _that demon_ _’s_ life when it has accrued the same amount of power it had when the Nilepoch originally stole from it. Then it feeds again and repeats the process, effectively keeping its victim’s power capped for an indefinite period.”

Nero frowned as he tried to follow this. “So if it targeted a hundred-year-old demon and stole eighty years’ worth of power, it wouldn’t show up again for another eighty years?”

“As near as I can tell.”

“Shit,” Nero muttered. He didn’t normally swear around Kyrie, but he felt the situation justified stronger language. “Given Dante and Vergil’s age, that means it’s not going to pop up for another forty-some years. I don’t want to be hunting this thing when I’m seventy.”

Lady’s brow furrowed. “Not necessarily. The Nilepoch was designed to steal _power_ , right? Not de-age its victims. But when it attacked humans, it reverted them to little kids. ”

“And killed them,” Nero pointed out. “Only Dante and Vergil survived.”

“Because they were only half-human. Humans age, but they don’t gain power. Demons gain power, but don’t age.”

Kyrie propped her chin on her fists. “I’m not following you.”

“Look—the Nilepoch accidentally gets summoned into our world and encounters humans. It only knows how to absorb the power demons gain over time, but that’s not how humans work. So when it attacks a human, it drains some of her… I don’t know, metabolic energy or something, but it also takes the thing _humans_ gain over time: Age.”

Nero nodded slowly. “Morrison said something about it looking like the work of a vampire. Like the kids had been drained of all vitality.”

“Exactly,” Lady said. “And the kids you found were the same, right? So the Nilepoch drains its human victims, but it doesn’t get the kind of power it needs, and they die almost immediately. It can’t pop forward in time to when they’re the same age and drain them again. Enter Dante and Vergil. It de-ages their human halves and de-powers their devil halves, but it doesn’t get a full dose of either. Follow?”

“You’re suggesting we’ll only have to wait twenty-some years instead of forty?”

“No, wait,” Kyrie said, straightening suddenly. “Maybe not that long at all! The boys have been growing really fast—much faster than normal babies. Human babies, I mean. So maybe there’s something about the way their human and devil sides interact that protected them from the full scope of the Nilepoch’s ability.”

“Or maybe, since the Nilepoch can’t use all of what it absorbed to move forward into the future, there’s some sort of leak where their human age is seeping back to them,” Lady suggested. “Energy changes form, but it can’t be created or destroyed, right?”

“Maybe, but we know physics don’t work the same on the demon plane.” Nero shrugged. “Though I can’t explain why they’re growing faster than usual, either, so whatever theories you come up with sound good to me.” He pulled Kyrie’s translation closer and skimmed it. “So was there anything in here about how to undo what the Nilepoch does to its victims?”

Kyrie shook her head. “All we could figure out is that the sphere in its mouth is critical to both how it absorbs and how it stores the stolen energy. There’s nothing that suggests the process can be reversed.”

“With some demons, their powers fade after they’re killed,” Lady said. “Though I have no idea if that would work on this one or not.”

Nero frowned. “Okay. So assuming the Nilepoch _does_ show up some time in the next twenty years, how do we kill it?”

Kyrie glanced at Lady, then back at Nero. “The same way you’d kill any other demon, I guess?” She gave a little shrug. “The book only talked about how to make them, not how to destroy them.”

“That figures.” Nero sighed. “But we know that it got the best of Dante and Vergil. So there has to be a trick to it. Something they wouldn’t have known to do, or been able to do.”

“My guess is that the _real_ trick is to kill it before it zaps you back to infancy.” Lady smiled grimly. “Or, in my case, certain death.”

“I won’t let that happen,” Nero said. “Not that I’m eager to revisit my childhood, but if we have to face this thing, seems like I’ve got the best chance of surviving it.”

Kyrie looked up in alarm, and Lady shook her head. “We don’t know that. From the reaction you described, Vergil must have known what this thing was, and the first thing he did was throw you out of its reach. Let’s operate on the assumption that it could be lethal to _any_ of us.”

“Well, it’s all theoretical until it uses up whatever power it stole from Dante and Vergil and shows up again.” Nero slumped back against the cushions. “And we don’t know if that will be in a week, or in fifty years.”

Kyrie nodded. “There’s nothing to do but wait and see.”

“I hate waiting,” Nero muttered.

“I know you do. You want to fix everything right away.” Kyrie squeezed in his hand. “But it’s not as though their fate is completely out of our hands. Your father and uncle are still with us. It’s up to us to take care of them the best we can, and help them regain everything they’ve lost. Even if it takes years.”

She was right, of course. Nero returned the pressure on her fingers.

As if on cue, a plaintive wail from upstairs indicated that the twins were in need of attention, and probably clean diapers. Nero started to rise, but Kyrie waved him back down. “No, I’ll do it. I was going to go up soon, anyway. You and Lady can keep talking shop.” She smothered a yawn. “I think all that translating must have worn me out.”

“Turn off your alarm,” Nero said. “I’ll take care of the kids in the morning. You deserve the extra rest.”

She laughed at the suggestion. “I’m not _that_ tired. I’ll be fine after a good night’s sleep.”

“Okay.” Nero gave her a quick kiss. “I’ll be up soon.”

Kyrie turned to Lady. “Sleep well. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Good night.” Lady’s eyes followed Kyrie up the stairs, then shifted to Nero. “You know, I’m just going to come right out and ask: How the _hell_ did a guy like you manage to snag a girl like that?”

“You know, I ask myself that question every single day, and I’m pretty much convinced it was some kinda fluke.” Nero shook his head. “I just hope the universe never realizes its mistake, because I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

The crying upstairs trailed off suddenly, and Lady chuckled. “Right now, I’m sure none of us do.”


	16. Chapter 16

At breakfast the next morning, Lady announced that she was heading back to the mainland. This news was greeted with a chorus of protest from the children, with Flavia the most vocal. “Why must you go?” the little girl pleaded.

“I have to return that rental trailer before I own it,” Lady said. “Besides, I need to get back to work. I have clients waiting on me.”

“What kind of work do you do?” asked Carlo.

Lady froze for an instant, eyes flicking toward Kyrie and Nero in brief panic. “Uh… the same thing that Nero does!”

Kyle seemed thoroughly impressed. “You’re a mechanic too? Like Nero and Nico?”

“Of course! That’s… how I keep my bike in shape.” She flashed a slightly strained smile. “Anyway, I’ve got my shop at home to get back to. I can’t leave Trish to do all the work alone.”

Flavia was crestfallen. “Will you come again?”

“I sure will, Little Miss.” Lady tugged on one of the pigtail braids she’d helped plait into Flavia’s copper hair that morning. “You keep practicing your cartwheels and somersaults, and next time I’ll teach you a couple more moves to impress your friends at school.”

After breakfast and a gauntlet of farewell hugs from the children, Kyrie and Nero walked Lady out to her bike. Nero loaded the briefcase and its weighty contents into the trailer, and he could have sworn the suspension sank halfway to the axle. “I can’t thank you enough for bringing all those things for us,” Kyrie said as she hugged Lady. “I know everyone at the orphanage is grateful, too.”

“It wasn’t any trouble.” Lady glanced between them. “Speaking of the orphanage, let me know if anything else happens. If that summoning thing is going to be a regular occurrence, I might be able to find some wards to help protect the property. They’re a pain to install, and they aren’t cheap, but it’s better than leaving all those kids unprotected.”

“I’ll keep you posted,” Nero promised. “Hey, really, thanks for all your help. The book, the translation, everything.”

She waved the matter aside with a hand. “I just wish it had contained the magic phrase that would make everything snap back to normal. I don’t know who I’m supposed to pick on if Dante’s not around.” Her eyes shifted to the upstairs window, beyond which lay Zaffiro and Rosso, confined to their playpen. “I think I’d feel bad mocking a toddler, even if it is Dante.”

“We’ll get them back,” Nero said with more confidence than he felt. “We already know a lot more about the situation now than we did a couple of days ago. Progress is progress, right?”

They agreed to continue their research separately and share any findings, and at last Lady turned her bike toward the ferry dock. They waved a final farewell as she rounded the corner.

“So what now?” Kyrie sighed, looping an arm through Nero’s elbow. “You don’t have any job requests, do you?”

“No. I talked to Nico on Friday, and she says she hasn’t had a single call all week. It’s weird.” Nero glanced down at her. “What do you have planned for the day?”

“I have a lot of things to catch up on around the house. I put off the laundry while we were working on the translation, but if the kids are going to have clean clothes for school this week, it needs to be done today. And I promised to do some bookkeeping for the orphanage. Sister Harriet usually does it, but she’s been ill the last few weeks.”

“Do you want the kids in or out while you’re working on that?”

She thought for a moment. “If they’re home, I can have them help sort the laundry, and then they can straighten up their rooms while I’m doing the books. With all the new things Lady brought, the toy storage needs reorganizing.”

Nero nodded. “Do you think you can manage without Julio for a couple hours?”

“Of course. Are you thinking of taking him somewhere and having The Talk?” She laughed. “We probably shouldn’t call it that, especially after Lady’s comment.”

“Well, it feels like the same kind of milestone. And yeah, I was going to, unless you’d rather tell him yourself.”

Kyrie considered it. “No, he seems to be opening up to you a little more lately. I think he’d rather hear it from you. But Nero…” She laid a hand on his arm. “I know your usual style is more brute force than delicacy, but be gentle with the truth. It’s a big adjustment. You and I grew up knowing all about demons, but these children haven’t been raised on the Order’s curriculum.”

“I know. I’ll go easy.” He shook his head. “Though I think you might be surprised at what these kids already know.”

* * *

It wasn’t uncommon for Julio to be recruited for grocery shopping, as he was the only one of the children big enough to help carry the groceries, but Nero witnessed a distinct light bulb moment in the boy when the “groceries” proved to be a single-serve gelato cup from the convenience store across from the park. Nero led the way to an isolated bench, produced two spoons from a jacket pocket, and opened the gelato.

“So,” Nero said, scraping a curl of frozen chocolate from the cup’s cardboard lid. “Demons.” It wasn’t quite the delicate handling he’d promised Kyrie, but he knew Julio already had an inkling of the truth. This talk was more to set the record straight than to reveal any world-altering realities. “Tell me what you know already.”

Julio scooped a spoonful of chocolate into his mouth and savored it before answering. Gelato was a rare luxury, reserved for birthdays and always served sparingly. “I know they attack people,” he said at last. “They have something to do with the Order. And…” He frowned. “I remember, when I was real little, my mom used to tell me some story about a good demon who saved people. His name was Spadi or something. But after my mom died, my dad just said it was a stupid fairy tale and wouldn’t talk about it any more.”

Nero knew Julio had been told his mother had died in the earthquake. It was no wonder that the boy’s father had refused to propagate the Order’s beliefs after they had led to the death of his wife. “His name was Sparda,” Nero said, “and he was no fairy tale.”

In between tastes of gelato, Nero outlined in brief the legend of Sparda, the rise of the Order that worshiped him, and the internal corruption that had led to the Order’s downfall. He finished—gently, as Kyrie had suggested—by explaining that the destruction across the island had not been the result of a natural disaster, but was due to the Order’s bid to conquer the world using power harnessed from demons.

After Nero had stopped speaking, Julio remained silent for a while. Nero handed him the gelato cup and let him finish it as he thought. “So my mom was killed by demons?” he asked at last.

“Yes. Probably indirectly, but yes. A lot of people died that day.” An image of Credo flashed through his mind, and he pushed it away. This time wasn’t about his own grief; it was for Julio.

“Oh.” Julio fiddled with his spoon and remained silent. After several more minutes, he added, “So if the Order is gone, why are there still demons here?”

“The way I understand it, when they were trying to get all that power, the Order opened a bunch of portals to the underworld. Those gates were closed, but they left weak spots that demons can still bust through occasionally.”

Julio nodded, absorbing this. “And then they just go around attacking people?”

“Until someone kills them, yeah. There are people who specialize in that, though. Professional devil hunters. Their job is to keep everyone safe by taking out the demons.”

Julio’s gaze slid sideways. “Is that your real job?”

Nero froze. He hadn’t anticipated this question. “You think I’m a devil hunter?”

“Well I don’t think you’re really a mechanic,” Julio huffed. “You always come home really dirty, but you never have any grease on your hands. And that big case you keep in the garage isn’t shaped like a toolbox.”

Nero couldn’t help but laugh at how easily his lies unraveled. “You know, you’re absolutely right. I guess I need to work on my cover story.” He gave Julio an appraising look. “You absolutely swear to keep everything I’m about to say just between us?”

Julio hesitated. “Even from Kyrie?”

“Nah, Kyrie knows everything. But from the other kids, definitely.”

Julio nodded eagerly. “Yeah, I promise.”

“All right.” Nero leaned closer, as though divulging a great secret. “I used to be one of the Order’s Holy Knights. Part of my job was cleaning up the rogue demons that were loose on the island. One day, another devil hunter, guy by the name of Dante, showed up and started fighting with the Order.” He decided the intricacies of of Sanctus’s assassination and subsequent demonic resurrection were more detail than Julio needed. “My orders were to take this Dante down.”

Julio’s eyes were wide. “Did you kill him?”

“No. We faced off a couple times, but it ended in a draw.” It hadn’t ended anywhere near a draw. Nero had known from their very first encounter that Dante was only toying with him, letting him live because doing so seemed to afford him some perverse amusement. It wasn’t until years later that Nero had learned exactly _why_ Dante had spared him. “But while we were fighting, he said some things that made me suspicious about the Order. I started poking around, and that’s when I found out what the Order was up to. So I teamed up with Dante, and we took down the guys at the very top of the Order’s leadership.”

“Did you kill _them?_ ”

Nero knew better than to answer that question honestly. “We, uh, we kicked their asses pretty good, and stopped them from turning even more demons loose.” He altered course before he was trapped into any admissions that Kyrie wouldn’t approve of. “But this other hunter, Dante, turns out he had a devil-hunting outfit on the mainland called Devil May Cry.”

“That’s the name on your van!”

“Yeah. So after he saw how many demons were still running around Fortuna, he broke me into the business, too. I’m kind of like a mobile version of his shop.”

Julio nodded as he absorbed this. “And that’s why you have to go work on the mainland sometimes? Because there are demons to hunt?”

“Sure is.” Nero smiled; the kid was pretty sharp. “And there’s one more thing that you absolutely _have_ to keep secret, because nobody on this whole island knows this, besides Kyrie and Nico.”

Julio was scarcely breathing. “What?”

Nero narrowed his eyes. “Actually, I don’t know if I should tell you this…”

“You can tell me,” Julio insisted. “I promise I won’t tell anyone!”

“You sure?”

Julio nodded vigorously.

“Okay, if you _swear_ not to tell.” It occurred to Nero that bluster aside, maybe it really wasn’t a great idea to share his secret with a twelve-year-old kid… But then again, anyone who would know about Dante’s heritage was likely dead already. The Order had been obsessed with acquiring the power from Sparda’s bloodline, but nobody else seemed to care. “You remember I told you I found out I had family?”

“Your dad, and your uncle, and Rosso and Zaffiro,” Julio recounted.

Nero nodded. “Well, it turns out devil hunting kinda runs in the family. Because Dante is also my uncle.”

He hadn’t thought it possible for Julio’s eyes to stretch any larger, but they managed the feat. “That’s so cool!” Julio whispered. A few seconds passed, and his expression faltered. “But… but you said your dad and uncle were hurt in an accident, so…”

Nero nodded. “They were hunting a big demon, and it got the drop on them.”

“So your dad’s a hunter too?”

“He, uh…” Nero hesitated. When they’d met, Vergil had been more or less the _opposite_ of a devil hunter. “He didn’t used to be, but he’s been at it ever since he… got back in the area. I think it’s what he’s going to do for now.”

“And Lady? And Trish?”

“Trish is Dante’s business partner. Lady is a freelancer, but she works with them a lot.”

Julio nodded. “I didn’t believe she was a mechanic, either. She was carrying guns and grenades.”

Nero sighed. “Okay, I guess we _all_ need to work on our cover stories.”

“Yeah, you do,” Julio agreed. “Do you have a rocket launcher like hers?”

Could the Punch Line be called a rocket launcher? He’d have to ask Nico if there were any technical distinction. “Not exactly like hers. I have a kickass sword and gun, though.”

Julio’s eyes lit up. “Can I see them?”

Well, he’d walked right into that one. “Kyrie has pretty strict rules about the gun. But I can show you my sword sometime, as long as the other kids aren’t around.” There was far less danger in showing off Red Queen in her case. Kyrie could barely heft the sword; Julio wouldn’t be able to get the weapon off the ground, even if he somehow managed to bypass the case’s lock. “So. Is that everything you wanted to know? Any other questions?”

Julio licked the last trace of chocolate off his spoon as he thought. “Can I help? With hunting demons?”

“Absolutely not. It’s _crazy_ dangerous. Even Nico stays in the van when I’m fighting them.” That had little to do with the danger, and more to do with the fact that Nico couldn’t be bothered to get out from behind the wheel of the RV, but Julio didn’t need to know that. “I didn’t even start my basic training until I was sixteen, and until I was eighteen, I was only allowed out with two senior officers.” _Allowed_ being the operative word. Nero had lost count of how many demons he’d hunted down outside of official sanction, to test out his weapon prototypes, or just because he was feeling bored or restless.

Julio nodded as though he’d expected that answer, but he still looked disappointed. “So if I see a demon, what do I do?”

“You get the hell away from it and call for help,” Nero told him firmly. “Me, or Kyrie or Nico, if you can find one of us. If not, tell any adult. If there’s nobody around and it’s coming after you, you hide someplace sturdy.”

“Like the closet at the orphanage?”

“Yeah. Behind stone or metal, if you can find somewhere like that. Most of the demons that make it into the city aren’t strong enough to break through walls. Though there are some exceptions, so always try to get one of us if you can. And if the other kids are with you, you need to help them get to safety, too.” Nero hated dropping that kind of responsibility on Julio, but until they could openly discuss the demon threat, it was difficult to train the younger children how to react in an emergency. They’d all practiced safety drills, but as far as the kids knew, those were only weather-related.

Julio had latched on to something Nero had said. “So there’s more than one kind of demon?”

“Oh, yeah, there’s tons. Some are pretty small and weak; others are huge and dangerous. But the really tough ones don’t show up here anymore. They were only around because the Order brought them.” Or had _made_ them, in many cases.

“What do they look like?”

Nero briefly described Scarecrows and Chimeras, the only specimens he’d had to hunt on Fortuna in the past few months. He hoped the summoning incident at the orphanage didn’t predict an influx of stronger enemies. “But there could be others, so if you see anything really weird, just assume you should high-tail it out of there.”

“Okay.”

Julio still looked pensive, and Nero suspected there was still more the boy wanted to know. “Last call for questions while it’s just you and me. Anything else you can think of?”

“Well…” Julio chewed his lip. “There is _one_ thing I’ve wanted to ask for a while, but Kyrie always changes the subject.”

Nero spread his hands. “Okay. Shoot.”

Julio’s gaze slid to Nero’s right hand. “How’d you get your arm back?”

_Shit_. “Um… that’s…”

“Because when I first came to live with you, your hand looked… different than other people’s. And then you had the accident, and we visited you at the hospital, and you didn’t have an arm at all.” Julio frowned stubbornly. “And then Nico made you those metal arms, and you used them for a while. And then one day you came home and your arm was totally normal, and everyone pretended it had always been that way.”

Nero ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah. So, this is going to be hard to explain.”

“Harder than demons?”

“It’s related, actually. See, I…” Nero paused to glance around the park. There was no one nearby, but somehow he still felt it would be a bad idea to reveal his heritage, even to a child who trusted him. “Uh, well, Nico’s kind of a genius.”

Julio’s frown deepened. “She always _says_ she is, but I don’t see how that made you grow an arm back.”

“Okay, there’s something you need to know about demons. They can heal from injuries, a lot faster than humans can. And Nico figured out a way to steal some of the demons’ abilities and put them into the things she makes. But we don’t want anyone else to find out about that, because there are a lot of people who wouldn’t think it was a good idea to use demonic powers for _anything_. Even helping people. I mean, that’s kind of like what the Order did, but they ultimately used that power to do terrible things.”

The frown gave way to confusion. “So Nico stole a demon’s healing power and gave it to you? Is it like cloning?”

“Well, it’s… a little more complicated than that. But this arm does have some demon power behind it, yeah.”

Julio stared at Nero’s hand, then hesitantly poked it with a fingertip. “It feels normal, though.”

Nero laughed. “I mean, it _is_ my arm.”

“How does demon DNA make a human arm, though? Shouldn’t it have grown a demon arm?”

Nero was beginning to question how pleased he’d been with Julio’s show of intelligence. “Okay, look. When I was a kid, I had two normal, human-looking arms.” He held out his hands to illustrate. “Then when I was nineteen, my right arm got torn up pretty bad by a demon. Kyrie had taken some kids from the orphanage out for a walk, and they were attacked. I got hurt protecting them. That was right before the Order collapsed, and a bunch of weird shit happened. I was exposed to a lot of demons and a lot of experimental crap the Order was messing around with, and my arm kinda… absorbed some of that. That’s why you remember it looking different. Because it basically _was_ a demon arm.”

Julio’s brows knit together. “But it wasn’t evil or anything, right?”

Nero resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “No, it wasn’t evil. It was an arm. It just had some extra _oomph_.”

“And then you had the accident?” Julio frowned. “How did you lose your arm in the garage, anyway?”

“Somebody stole it.”

The boy blinked. “Somebody stole your arm?”

“They wanted the power that was trapped in it, so they ripped my arm right off.” Julio stared in frank disbelief, and Nero shrugged. “I’m serious. Sometimes people do crazy shit.”

Julio kept staring. “What were they gonna do with an _arm_?”

“They didn’t stick around to tell me.” That was true enough, though Nero had seen the Yamato before he’d blacked out in a pool of his own blood. “Anyway, once I lost my arm, Nico started making those prosthetic ones, and putting little bits of demon power in them. And eventually I was able to grow a new arm.” He waved at Julio. “But this is what my arm originally looked like, before all the demon stuff kicked off.”

Julio was still frowning at his hand. “So it’s not evil, even though it’s a demon arm.”

“It’s definitely not evil.” He nudged Julio with an elbow. “Not all demons are _automatically_ evil, you know. There are a few good ones out there.”

“Like Sparda?”

Nero nodded. “And I’ve met a couple others.”

“How do you tell the good ones from the bad ones?”

“Well… If something looks like it’s about to eat you, assume it’s about to eat you. If it just stops to ask you where the nearest pizza joint is, it’s probably okay.” Nero grinned and held out his hand for Julio’s spoon. “And speaking of pizza, we’d better go pick up the real groceries before it’s time for lunch. C’mon.”


	17. Chapter 17

As much as Nero generally loathed waiting for things to happen, he was grateful that there was nothing to be done on the Nilepoch front for a few days, because the week came out swinging and refused to hear the bell.

He’d just herded the kids out the door for school Monday morning when the telephone rang. Kyrie was up to her elbows in suds—she’d traded him diapers for dishes today—so Nero dashed back to the kitchen and caught the receiver on the third ring.

“I got us a gig!” Nico crowed before the “hello” had fully departed his lips. “I’ll pick you up in ten minutes. Be ready to roll.” She hung up, leaving Nero staring open-mouthed at the telephone in his hand.

“What was that all about?” Kyrie asked over her shoulder.

“Nico. Gotta go to work. I’ll change the twins before I go.” He tried to give her a quick kiss on the cheek, but got mostly earlobe because of the angle. He hoped that still counted as the mandatory goodbye kiss. “Back as soon as I can.”

Rosso and Zaffiro were not pleased with being rushed through their morning routine, but even with changing diapers and readying his weapons at full speed, Nero had barely reached the front walk before the Minotaurus van rolled up, horn blaring.

“I’m right here!” Nero snapped as he wrenched open the passenger door and hefted Red Queen’s case inside. “Geez, Nico, the neighbors already complain about this thing.” He climbed in and closed the door, bracing himself for the acceleration as Nico pulled away from the curb. “I didn’t even know you had the van out this morning. What’s going on?”

“Picked it up while you was all wet an’ naked,” Nico said, and grinned at Nero’s startled expression. “Kyrie said you were in the shower when I came by this mornin’. I had to pick up a delivery of machine parts at the pier. But be glad I did, because that’s how I landed us this sweet, sweet gig.”

“How sweet?” Nero arranged himself in the seat and propped his feet on the dashboard. “What’s the job, anyway?”

“One o’ the dockworkers said they been havin’ problems with their warehouse gettin’ ransacked, last couple o’ weeks. Nothing’s been taken, but plenty o’crates smashed up, stuff chewed or torn to bits. Said a couple o’ guys have seen weird critters lurkin’ around the area, and yesterday, one fella got his hand tore up pretty bad. They saw the van, talked to the freighter captain, and offered me free cargo delivery for the next six months if we’d clear ‘em out.”

Nero groaned. “Nico, I have bills coming due. I need _actual cash_ , not free shipping.”

“I know, I know.” She shot him a glare. “That’s why I’m passin’ the savings on to you. Discounts on repairs, ammo an’ armaments. Oughta reduce your overhead by fifty percent, at least.”

“There’s only overhead as long as there’s work,” Nero sighed. “This is our first job in weeks—assuming that other hunter doesn’t get there first this time.”

Nico shook her head. “Fellas at the dock said they haven’t talked to anybody else. Should be our gig, free an’ clear. If some other hunter shows up, then they’re psychic or somethin’.”

The rival hunter was apparently not in possession of any extra-sensory powers, because they found the warehouse devoid of all human life. There were plenty of signs of demon activity, though, and Nero soon flushed out a pack of mutated rats that zipped out to attack his boots. Apparently in the absence of proper hosts, the Tripoxylus that usually animated Scarecrows had adapted to whatever was available. The little vermin weren’t extraordinarily dangerous as individuals, though Nero quickly discovered that in a group they were capable of swarming up his leg and delivering painful bites. When he counterattacked they scattered through the warehouse, hiding in dark corners and doubling the time a simple cleanup operation like this should have taken.

Still, despite the lack of cash payment and the irritatingly small targets, Nero enjoyed the chance to get a little exercise. He hadn’t given himself a proper workout with Red Queen since before his injury, and it felt good to burn off the stress and inactivity of the past couple of weeks.

At last the final rat had been eradicated, and Nero latched Red Queen back in her case. “Man, I’m getting hungry. Guess I worked up an appetite smacking all those little bastards.” He rubbed at his right thigh, where his jeans now sported a dozen tiny holes made by rat teeth. “Hope those things aren’t carrying any diseases.”

“Eh, you’d probably live through it.” Nico stubbed out the cigarette she’d been smoking, shifted the van into gear, and headed for the office to confirm that the job was finished. “You ever catch cold before?”

“Yeah, sure. Had one every year when I was a kid. All those kids living together, the whole orphanage would be out of commission for two weeks every winter.” Nero frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t think I’ve been sick since I got my powers, though. Wonder if that’s luck, or if my healing ability works on viruses too.”

“Kids are little germ factories. If you got all those kids around and haven’t been sick, it’s either a miracle or devil powers. Be right back.” She hopped out of the van and went into the office.

Nero took the opportunity to call home with the radio phone attached to the dashboard, intending to ask if Kyrie wanted him to pick anything up while he was out, but there was no answer. He shrugged, decided she’d probably gone shopping herself, and stretched his legs out on the dash. Might as well grab a short nap while he was waiting.

* * *

Nico backed the unwieldy van into the garage with the ease of long practice. “Think Kyrie would mind if I stayed for lunch?”

“Does she ever mind? She’d feed this whole island if we could afford it.” Nero hopped out and retrieved Red Queen’s case, propping it in its usual spot in the corner. He glanced over to where Nico was pulling down the overhead door. “Hey, make sure that’s locked on both sides.”

Nico examined the new bolt he was pointing at. “When did you add this?”

“Last week. We had one break-in while you and I were gone, and then another attempt while Lady was here.”

“Huh. That’s weird.” Nico tapped a finger against her lips, thoughtful.

Nero shrugged. “Not _that_ weird. Times are hard for a lot of people.”

“No, I just mean it’s a weird coincidence. Landlord said somebody was messin’ around my place, too. He chased ‘em off before they got inside, though.”

“When was this?”

“Couple, three weeks ago. While you an’ I were gone.”

Nero frowned. “I wonder if they hit a whole bunch of places at once. Maybe we ought to ask around, see if anybody else had any trouble.” He unlocked the door that connected to the house. “Kyrie, I’m home!” he called as he entered the front room. “Nico’s here, too.”

“Oh!” a reedy voice piped up. A moment later, an elderly woman struggled up from the armchair. Half a sock dangled from a knitting needle, and a ball of yarn sat at her feet. “Good afternoon, Nero.”

“Mrs. Trevisan?” Nero blinked at his neighbor, who had obviously been dozing when he’d entered. “Uh, hi. Is Kyrie around?”

“She asked me to come over about an hour ago. She said there was an emergency and she had to go to the school, and she needed someone to be here so she could leave the babies.” The elderly woman beamed. “You two are so secretive! I didn’t even know she was expecting. Those two little angels look just like you, though. You must be a proud daddy.” She winked.

“Uh…” Nero flushed and tried to ignore Nico’s snorts of laughter. “No, they’re not mine, Mrs. Trevisan. I mean—they’re not _ours_. We’re just caring for them. Did, uh… did Kyrie say what happened at the school?”

“No, I don’t believe she did. She seemed to be in a bit of a rush.”

“Okay. Well, thanks for keeping an eye on things here. Nico and I can watch the kids for now, though, so I don’t want to take up any more of your time. I’m sure you have things to get back to.” He smiled, silently praying that the garrulous woman would take the hint and leave so he could call the school and find out what was going on. The last time she’d been here, it had taken him twenty minutes to extricate himself from conversation.

“Oh, nothing too pressing,” Mrs. Trevisan said, sitting again and fiddling with her knitting. “In fact, I was saying to Mrs. Talbot just the other day that I miss the days of the old—”

“Oh! I think I hear one of the babies crying. I’d better go up and check on them. Nico, maybe you can help Mrs. Trevisan carry her things?” Nero darted up the stairs before either of them could reply. He closed the bedroom door behind him and leaned against it, wishing the only telephone in the house weren’t down in the kitchen. “It couldn’t be _that_ hard to install a telephone extension up here, can it?” he muttered aloud.

“Want out!” piped a voice. Nero glanced at the playpen and was astonished to see two white heads peeking hopefully over the side.

“No way. You guys can’t be _that_ tall yet! I just saw you this morning!” He went over and found that Rosso and Zaffiro weren’t standing—they were both hanging from the top rail by their hands, their feet dangling, arms flexed to allow them to peer over the side. “Holy shit. You’re two years old and already doing chin-ups. That’s _insane_.”

“Howee thit,” Rosso echoed. Nero grimaced. The kid had an unerring profanity sense, and sooner or later, it was going to get Nero in trouble.

Zaffiro’s lower lip jutted forward. “Want out,” he repeated. His grip on the bar was slipping.

“I can’t take you out right now, kid,” Nero sighed. “There’s a situation downstairs. Maybe later.”

“Out!” Zaffiro’s fingers slipped free, and he toppled back on his diaper-padded backside with such a startled expression that Nero nearly laughed. The look quickly melted into a pout, and the child got to his feet and threw up his arms insistently. “Want out!”

Rosso, still hanging but in equal danger of losing his grip, frowned at his brother. “ _Peas_ ,” he corrected.

“Since when are _you_ the stickler for rules?” Nero patted Rosso on the head, receiving a smile. Then, not wanting to show any favoritism, he reached down to ruffle Zaffiro’s hair.

_That_ proved to be a mistake.

Zaffiro latched on to Nero’s right wrist the instant it came within range of his stubby little arms. His grip was shockingly strong, and Nero immediately realized he couldn’t pull his arm back without lifting a dangling toddler out of the playpen with him. He tried shaking his arm free, but Zaffiro’s fingers dug in deep. “Ouch!” Nero hissed as one of Zaffiro’s thumbs stabbed into the hollow between two tendons. “Let go, you little—” He tried to pry the tiny fingers loose with his left hand.

Rosso, seeing his opportunity, released the bar and landed on his feet, then stretched up and latched onto Nero’s forearm. He pulled himself up high enough to push off the side panel with his feet and squirmed around until his body was dangling within the crook of Nero’s elbow. Rosso locked his arms and legs around Nero’s arm and grinned. “Up!” he said cheerfully.

“You are not helping!” snapped Nero, and shifted his grip from Zaffiro’s fingers to the back of Rosso’s collar. If one of the twins climbed up him and got loose, it would be a disaster. “Let go.”

Zaffiro scowled at his brother’s progress. Releasing Nero’s wrist with one hand, he made a calculated swing and latched onto one of Rosso’s ankles. The younger twin gave a yelp and lost his balance, sliding around until he was hanging beneath Nero’s arm.

At that moment, the door opened. “Hey, I got rid of the old lady…” Nico trailed off as she stared at the bizarre scene, then started laughing. Nero couldn’t even blame her; he was sure he looked hilarious, with one toddler dangling from his arm and another suspended between his wrist and the other child’s foot.

“Don’t say a word,” Nero growled. “Just get over here and help get them off me.”

“Uh, if you aren’t strong enough to get them to let go, I’m not sure what you think _I_ _’m_ gonna do.” Nico walked in a semicircle around him, admiring the children’s tenacity as Nero tried to remove them. “Maybe if we had some grease or somethin’…”

Nero rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you use your superior engineering knowledge to figure out how to lever them off of me?”

“You want me to get a crowbar from the garage?” She frowned. “Seems a little harsh, usin’ it on little babies, though…”

_Garage_. That word connected to another, and another, until Nero’s brain finally sparked with the image of the latest set of Devil Breakers Nico had made for him. “Aw, hell, I should have thought of this earlier.” With an instant’s concentration, he phased his right arm out of corporeality. The moment it turned blue and transparent, the twins slipped through it and tumbled into the bottom of the playpen, landing with a surprised yelp.

Nico burst out laughing. “Oh, man, I never thought of that! Good thing you grew back a childproof arm.”

Nero massaged his bruised wrist. “Doesn’t feel very childproof. Those little monsters are _strong_.”

“Well, they are half demon.” Nico slapped his shoulder. “Come on, we better scoot before they try that on me. I can’t do your devil-arm thingy.”

The children were not happy about being left behind. “Want _out!_ ” Zaffiro shrieked as they began to leave the room.

Nero glanced back and saw a flash of blue sparks from the playpen. He pushed Nico through and quickly closed the door behind them. “Shit. I just remembered something.”

She pushed up her glasses, knocked askew by his shove, and blinked at him. “What?”

“They’ve been growing so fast it’s hard to know for sure, but Kyrie says from their size and weight, they’re probably somewhere around two and a half years old right now.”

“So?”

Nero raised his eyebrows. “You never heard of the Terrible Twos?”

From within the room came an angry wail, followed by the crash of something hitting the wall. A mournful _moooo_ sounded beneath the chaos, and Rosso gave a bellow of rage, which was followed by a sharp yelp.

Nico stared at the door, wide-eyed. “What the hell was all that?”

“I’m guessing Zaffiro sent Rosso’s farm animal toy on a test flight, and he’s not happy about it.” Nero sighed and cracked the door open to make sure nothing was on fire. The smell of ozone greeted him—a byproduct, no doubt, of twin lightning storms kicking off—but he could hear enough scrabbling to know that both toddlers were still feeling quite energetic. Occasional flashes of red and blue lit the playpen from within. “You know what? I’m not getting involved. They survived childhood once already. I’m sure they’ll be just fine.”

Nero trudged downstairs, but Nico hung back by the door. “Uh… okay, but are you sure your _house_ will?” She flinched as something struck the door from the other side.

“It’ll be easier to just fix it afterward than to prevent the damage.”

Nico followed him down the steps. “But if one of ‘em hurts the other…”

“You wanna go in there and try to stop them? Be my guest.” Nero shook his head. “I already stopped them from killing each other once. I think that’s my quota.” He was just reaching for the telephone when the front door opened. He ducked back out into the hall and saw Kyrie and Scipio entering. “Hey! I was just about to call the school. What’s going—” Scipio turned around, and Nero choked off when he saw that the front of the boy’s shirt was covered in blood. “What the—what happened to you?”

Kyrie sighed as she hung up their coats. “Scipio got in a fight at school.” She nudged the boy forward. “Go on, wait for me in the kitchen.”

Nico grinned and mock-punched Scipio’s shoulder as he passed. “Didja give the other guy as good as ya got?”

“ _Nico!_ ” Kyrie snapped. Nero jumped; he’d almost never heard her use such a severe tone.

“Uh, right. Sorry. Fightin’s bad, kid.” Nico absently scratched her hair. “Well, looks like you got your hands full, so I guess I’d better get movin’. Guess I’ll go find some lunch.”

It showed how distracted Kyrie was that she didn’t even try to stop Nico. Instead, she marched into the kitchen and began packing ice into a towel. “Take off your shirt,” she instructed. The boy silently obeyed, and Kyrie traded him for the ice pack. “Hold this over your eye.” She rubbed soap into the fabric while the sink filled with cold water. “Has your nose stopped bleeding?”

Scipio gave a sullen nod. He still hadn’t spoken a word.

Nero hovered in the background, feeling vaguely useless. He felt he should help somehow, but Kyrie seemed to have the situation well in hand, and something in her demeanor made him hesitate to question her any further about what had happened.

Once the shirt had been treated and was soaking in the sink, Kyrie removed the ice from Scipio’s face to check the bruising. “Go rinse your face, change clothes, and then lie down in your room. No toys.”

Scipio slunk out of the kitchen, and Kyrie shook the remaining ice cubes into the sink before replacing the towel on its hook. She seemed to deflate then, sinking forward to rest her weight on her arms. Her auburn hair pooled on the counter.

“Hey.” Nero moved closer and rubbed her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

She turned suddenly and leaned into him, and he closed his arms around her as a reflex. “Nero, what are we doing?” she murmured into his shoulder.

“What do you mean?” He hated how hopeless she sounded. “What’s going on? Talk to me.”

“With the kids. With us. With… everything.” She sighed. “I keep telling myself we’re doing the right thing. I keep telling myself we can do anything together, that all the time and effort we’ve put in is going to pay off, that we’re going to make it. But honestly, right now, I’m starting to wonder.”

Nero led her to the table and pulled out a chair, which she sank into as though she hadn’t the strength to stay standing. He sat beside her. “Okay, let’s start at the top. What’s got you worried about the kids?”

She gestured to the sink, filled with bloody water, before pushing her hair back from her face. “Every time I think we’re making progress, something like this happens. I’m not oblivious; I know there’s a stigma surrounding the orphanage. People pity the children, but there’s this sense that they are… are second-class, are _problematic_ , somehow, just because they’ve lost their parents. I feel like it’s up to us to make them understand that these kids are worth investing in, they’re worth giving homes to. And when something like this happens, it just reinforces what people are already thinking, and it makes me feel like we’ve failed.”

“Kyrie, kids get into fights all the time. _All_ kids make bad choices sometimes, orphans or otherwise. You can’t take on all the responsibility for something that’s just a part of growing up.”

“It may be part of growing up when a child with a family does it, but when one of our kids makes a mistake, someone always says it’s because they don’t have _real_ parents to raise them properly.” She dashed away a tear on her cheek. “Do you know what the mother of the other boy said to me, when we were leaving the school? She said it was a pity I had to look after such an ungrateful child, and that Scipio should really just be thankful he wasn’t out begging on the street. _Thankful_ , as if a safe home isn’t the bare minimum that every child deserves—”

She broke down, then, and Nero held her as she cried. He set aside his rage for the unknown woman who would say such a thing and focused instead on Kyrie. He’d rarely seen her so upset, even in the face of criticism. “I know it’s tough,” he murmured into her hair. “There’s no instruction manual for what we’re doing. Sometimes I wonder how the hell I’m supposed to figure kids out when I don’t even know what’s going on with myself half the time. But then I remember _being_ one of those kids, sleeping in bunk number twenty-eight because numbers were the only way they could keep track of us. I remember how it felt when I came here, with my school books and my one bag of clothes, and got to sleep in my very own bedroom for the first time in my life. You and Credo never gave up on me, and that’s the only thing that kept me going. So we’re not giving up on these kids either, okay? We’re gonna get through everything they throw at us. We’ll be okay.”

“Will we?” She pulled back and scrubbed tears from her eyes. “Things are _bad_ , Nero. I finished balancing the books this morning, and the orphanage doesn’t have enough funds to operate through the end of the year. And after we pay this month’s bills, we’ll only have enough left for about two weeks’ worth of groceries.” She looked up suddenly. “Did you get anything from that job this morning?”

It caused him physical pain to watch the hope fade from her eyes when he had to tell her he hadn’t. “I keep thinking there’s gotta be something I’m missing. Some other angle, some other way to make money.”

“Maybe you were right.” She sounded wrung out, hollow. “Maybe Fortuna is dying, and we were foolish to stay this long. But now we’re here, with seven children depending on us, and we don’t even have the resources to leave.” She rose, ran the towel under the tap, and pressed it over her puffy eyes. “I don’t know what to do, Nero. I’ve been thinking about it all morning.”

“Let me talk to some people tomorrow. Maybe I can come up with something to tide us over.” He didn’t have much worth selling, but maybe Morrison or Lady knew of a way to make some quick cash. There were always weird collectors of the occult willing to pay for demon artifacts, and any number of strange things might still lurk in the bowels of the castle. And if all else failed… well, he _could_ consider more mundane forms of employment. “Hey, how about you sit down, and I’ll make us some lunch.”

Kyrie pulled the sink plug and began rinsing the shirt she’d been soaking. “Go ahead, if you want something. I’m not really hungry.”

“Kyrie.” He stood and put his hands on her shoulders. “At least have a cup of tea, or something. Time is one thing we’re not running out of, and you can afford to take a break for a few minutes.”

She leaned back against his chest. “You sound like Sister Benedicta. She’s always telling me to rest.”

“Because you work harder than anyone either of us have ever known.” He reached around her to fill the kettle, then put it on the stove to boil. “Sit down. You can even put your feet up on the table. I won’t tell the kids.”

That drew a smile at last. “Fine, if it will get you to stop nagging me, I’ll sit.”

“Good girl. Toast goes with tea, right?”

“And now you’re going to insist I eat.” She sighed. “I’ll have one slice to make you happy, but I really don’t feel up to more than that. I think the stress has gotten to my stomach.”

“Fair enough.” He loaded the toaster and set out two mugs. “So what else is on the agenda for the day? Anything I can help with?”

She brushed at some crumbs on the table. “I was going to clean the kitchen and bathroom this afternoon.”

“Why bother? The kids are just going to get them messy again tonight.”

“You know I clean them every week. With as many people as we have sharing that one bathroom, it needs it at least that often.”

“All right, if you insist.” He set a cup of tea in front of her. “So I’ll clean the bathroom. Would you like butter or jam on your toast?”

“Just butter, thank you. And I am perfectly capable of cleaning the bathroom.”

“You can’t clean the bathroom, because you’ll be busy.”

“Doing what?”

“I don’t know. Taking a nap, maybe. Or reading. When was the last time you read a book? Not a kid’s book. An adult book.”

“Yesterday. And I still have those Abyssal characters swimming before my eyes. Thank you,” she added as he set a plate of toast in front of her. “That reminds me, I’ll have to thank Mrs. Trevisan for babysitting. I hope the boys didn’t give her any trouble.”

“They didn’t. She was asleep when I got here. Did you know she thought they were ours?” Nero finished building his own sandwich and sat beside her.

Kyrie shook her head fondly. “She told me I still looked very slim for having had twins. I tried to tell her they weren’t mine, but I think she’s gotten a little hard of hearing. Oh!” She glanced at the clock. “It’s past the boys’ lunch time. I should bring them down.”

Nero halted her with a hand on her arm. “Before you go upstairs, you should know that our bedroom may resemble a war zone.”

Her eyes widened. “What happened?”

“Twin tantrums. It was pretty bad, fireworks and everything. I finally left them duking it out in their playpen. Nico was about to become collateral damage, and I figured with their healing ability, they couldn’t do anything permanent to each other.”

“Oh, dear.” Kyrie sighed. “Let’s go see how bad it is.”

“You sure you don’t want to finish your tea first?”

“It may change this afternoon’s agenda. At least we’ll be able to plan while we feed them.”

They made their way upstairs. Nero listened at the door, but all seemed quiet.

Kyrie peered over his shoulder as he eased open the door. “It doesn’t look that bad,” she whispered. There were a few toys scattered on the floor, and Rosso’s battery-powered animal wheel was lying cracked by the wall, but there didn’t seem to be any structural damage anywhere.

The silence continued, which was unusual for this time of day. They tiptoed over to the playpen and peered inside. Rosso and Zaffiro lay in perfect mirror image, sound asleep. Their cheeks were slightly tear-stained, but otherwise they were the picture of happy, healthy toddlers.

“It looks like lunch time has been replaced with nap time,” Kyrie whispered.

“They must have worn themselves out.” He chuckled. “I guess we should be glad there are two of them. At least they can vent their frustrations at each other with no ill effects.”

“From what you’ve told me, it sounds like they still do that as adults.” Kyrie leaned against Nero, resting her head on his shoulder. “You know, looking at them, a nap is starting to sound attractive. I’m pretty worn out from my tantrum, too.”

“Well, there’s an offer on the table for a free afternoon. Bathroom cleaning included.”

“You’re very good to me.” She smiled up at him. “I think I’ll keep you.”

Nero kissed her forehead. “Then my diabolical scheme is working as planned.”


	18. Chapter 18

Replaying the events and conversations of the previous day in the early hours Tuesday morning, Nero was struck with an idea. As soon as the children were bundled off to school, he made a call to Nico, then returned to Port Caerula, where they had cleared the warehouse, and knocked at the office door.

The man who answered was easily twice Nero’s size across the chest. “Can I help you?”

“You Joe Panni?” Nico had given him the name of the man who had hired her.

The big man nodded. “Who are you?”

Nero gave his name. “I was here yesterday. Took care of your little, uh, rodent problem.”

Panni bristled. “I already cut a deal with that Goldstein woman. I don’t owe you nothin’ more.”

“Relax,” Nero said. “This isn’t a collection call. I heard one of your guys got hurt by those things.”

“Yeah, Big Gino. Chewed up his hand pretty bad.” Panni scowled. “He was one of my best haulers, too.”

“You looking to hire a replacement?”

“Maybe. You know somebody?”

Nero shrugged. “I’m looking to pick up a little extra cash.”

Panni stared at him for a few seconds before letting out a loud guffaw. “Skinny little matchstick like you, replace Gino? Listen, kid, Big Gee makes yours truly look like a midget. Guy could lift his own body weight without breakin’ a sweat. Sorry, but I got heavy cargo that needs moving, and I ain’t got no time to sweep up the pieces after it crushes you.”

“I can do the work,” Nero snapped. “Just give me a shot.”

“No way. If I wanna waste my money, I got half-starved geezers comin’ here every day beggin’ for work.”

Nero’s temper flared, but he forced himself not to say anything that would jeopardize his chances of being hired. “Fine. That your bike?” He pointed at a motor scooter parked nearby.

Panni shot him a suspicious look. “Yeah. Why?”

“Just checking.” Nero walked over, gave the scooter a quick scan to decide which point was most structurally sound, and dropped his hand on the frame. “You like it where it is?”

Panni’s chest swelled. “You threatenin’ me, kid? You mess with my ride, so help me, I’ll mess with your face.”

“Nah, I’m just offering to move it.” _Lady said Trish lifted a car once_ , Nero reminded himself. He summoned all his devil-blood-enhanced strength and focused it into one smooth bicep curl. “Since it’s parked in a fire lane, and all.”

“What… How…” Panni’s jaw hung slack as he stared at the young man who was casually holding his scooter in the air, one-handed. “That… that thing weighs a hundred and fifty kilos!”

“So… not quite twice my body weight? Yeah, sounds about right.” Nero lowered the scooter, careful not to bounce the suspension too hard. “But if you’d rather waste your money on one of those old geezers…”

“No, no, no, I can use you. I can use you.” Panni held out his hands in a placating gesture. “Look, I don’t got a lot of shipments comin’ in right now. I can only give you maybe two days a week.”

“Two days a week suits me fine. What’s it pay?”

Panni quoted a figure that wasn’t quite as much as Nero was hoping, but he was hardly in a position to be selective. “Big Gino worked Mondays and Wednesdays. Be here at seven if you wanna work.”

“Sounds good. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

Nero waited until he was out of sight of the office before he winced and massaged his arm, which ached with the strain he’d put on it. “And that, kids, is why we should practice good lifting form.”

* * *

Kyrie received the news of Nero’s new employment with understanding, gratitude, and more than a little relief, but Nico was a different matter altogether. “Are you out o’ your _mind?_ ” she squealed, nearly banging her head on the van’s open hood. She replaced the cap on the wiper fluid reservoir before slamming the hood. “How are you gonna kick demon ass if you’re throwin’ freight on the docks all day?”

“It’s only two days a week, Nico. And we haven’t exactly been reeling in the gigs lately. I’m not happy about switching from devil hunting to manual labor, either, but I’ve got a whole house full of mouths to feed.” He paced the length of the garage. “Besides, it’s probably only until that Gino guy can work again, so I’m looking at a couple of months, tops. If our business picks up by then, I’ll quit. If not…” He sighed. “I hate the idea of switching off the neon for good, but I’ve gotta look at the long term. Kyrie has been more than patient with us trying to make this business work.”

“This business _was_ workin’! Right up until that other hunter showed up.” Nico scowled. “I’m gonna find out who it is an’ kick their ass. Since it sounds like I won’t be chasin’ down demons for the time being,” she added sourly.

Nero rolled his eyes. “Nico, _it_ _’s two days a week_. We can still take gigs on the other five days.”

“Right, then. Let me just call up the demons’ union and ask them would they please schedule all demon attacks on days other than Monday or Wednesday, thank you kindly.” Nico crammed a cigarette between her teeth and flicked her lighter.

Nero waved away the plume of smoke she exhaled. “Well, what about you? How are you making money when things are so slow?”

“People always need specialty stuff made.” She shrugged. “It’s not exactly gunsmithin’, but I can get by. If I get too desperate, I still got my old client list. Hunters always want quality firearms, an’ I can take orders long-distance.”

“Which is more than I can do,” Nero muttered. “If it didn’t cost so much to travel back and forth, I could take more hunting jobs on the mainland. Especially now, with Dante out of commission. But I don’t like leaving Kyrie to manage alone for that long, and we’d eat up half our profits in fuel and ferry tickets.”

“You said Trish was coverin’ Dante’s jobs, anyhow.” Nico tapped ash from her cigarette into the bin. “Look, I’m gonna go nose around an’ see what I can dig up on that new hunter. I’ll let you know if I hear of any jobs.”

“ _Cash_ jobs,” Nero reminded her.

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Nico ducked beneath the half-open garage door. “Hey, looks like the kids are home.” She started to wave a greeting, then broke off with a muttered, “Crap.” She ducked back into the garage and stubbed out the cigarette.

Nero rolled his eyes and waved his arms to dissipate the smoke. “You know they can smell this shit half a block away. You’re not fooling anyone.”

“No, but rules are rules, an’ Kyrie says no smokin’ in front of the kiddies.” Nico pushed up the overhead door. “Hiya, kids!”

“Hi, Nico!” several of the children chorused, but they hung back a few paces. Kyle wrinkled his nose at the acrid scent of tobacco smoke, and Carlo sneezed.

“Right. Well, I’m off to, uh, do that thing. Later, Nero.” Nico gave a final wave and strolled away down the sidewalk.

She was barely out of earshot when Flavia pronounced the garage “stinky.” Nero laughed. “Yeah, seems like someone’s been smoking around here again. That’s a pretty nasty habit.”

“It’s sunny today,” Carlo announced, as though Nero couldn’t observe the weather outside the garage. “Can we go play at the park?”

“It’s fine with me, but ask Kyrie first.” Nero watched the children file into the house, then turned to Julio, who was hanging back from the group. “You not going with them?”

“I will, but I wanted to ask you something first.”

Nero leaned against the van door. “I’m all ears.”

Julio fidgeted with his bag. “I don’t know if it’s something bad or not.”

“Well, if it is, I won’t hold you responsible.” Nero grinned. “What is it?”

“What’s…” Julio glanced around to make sure no one was nearby. “…Ginger?”

“Ginger?” Nero blinked. “It’s a spice.”

“Spice?”

“You know, like you cook with. A flavoring.”

Julio looked puzzled. “What’s it mean if someone says a _person_ is ginger?”

Nero shrugged. “I think it just means they’re a redhead. Because ginger is kind of an orange color.”

“So… like Scipio and Flavia?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Kyrie’s hair was that color when she was little, too.”

“Huh.” Julio frowned. “Is it bad?”

“To have red hair?”

“To be called a ginger.”

“I guess it depends. Anything can be bad if it’s said to be mean. Why?”

“Well, you know how Scipio got in that fight yesterday?”

“Yeah, I saw all the blood when he came home.”

Julio nodded. “Apparently the boy he fought with kept saying he was a ginger, and Scipio got mad and hit him.”

“Ah. I wondered what happened.” Nero sighed. “I’m willing to bet _Scipio_ doesn’t know what ginger means. He probably thought the kid was insulting him. I mean, maybe he was.”

“Probably. My friend Michael has a brother in Scipio’s class, and he said that kid Marco picks on everybody.”

“He probably gets it from his mom,” Nero muttered, recalling how upset Kyrie had been by the woman’s words. Before Julio could ask what he meant, Nero slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Hey, you better hurry and change clothes if you aren’t gonna get left behind.”

“Right!” Julio shouldered his bag. “Can I take the new ball Miss Lady brought? Coach showed me how to kick, and I want to practice.”

“Sure. Just don’t break anything I can’t afford to replace.” _Which is everything_ , Nero thought wryly.

* * *

Nero was at the dock early the next morning, pacing among the yawning group of workers while they waited for the cargo ship’s paperwork to be finalized so they could begin unloading. A couple of the old hands gave him curious looks, but when Nero mentioned that Panni had hired him to replace Big Gino, they merely shrugged and returned to their cigarettes or paper cups of coffee. That suited him fine, really. Nero wasn’t one for small talk, and he hadn’t taken this job to make new friends.

He was about to wander into the office to hunt up some coffee for himself when a voice rang out over the pier. “Yo, is that Nero?” Nero turned and spotted one of his former classmates, who grinned as he came closer. “Hey! I thought I recognized that weird albino hair.”

“Tonio!” Nero slapped the palm the other man offered in greeting. “Hey, man, haven’t seen you in half of forever.”

“I didn’t know you were still around these parts. You working here now?”

Nero shrugged. “Just filling in for a guy who got hurt.”

“Yeah, I heard about Big Gino.” Tonio’s eyes widened. “Wait, so _you_ were the one Joe was telling us about last night?” He laughed. “How’d you do that trick with the Vespa?”

Nero curled his arm and patted the bicep. “Don’t be deceived by the pretty face. I got it where it counts.”

“In the mouth, apparently.” Tonio snorted. “So what’ve you been up to? You still hanging around with that girl… what’s her name, the hot one from the class ahead of ours.”

“Kyrie. And it’s a little more than ‘hanging around.’ We’ve been together six years now.”

“Lucky you.” Tonio tucked his hands into his jacket pockets. “Caritas and I split up a couple years back. Last I heard she’d moved to Red Grave City.”

“Oh, man.” Nero winced. “Bad timing.”

“Yeah, haven’t heard from her since that place went to shit.” Tonio shrugged. “Good for all of us left here, though. Looks like she at least took the natural disasters with her.”

“Natural disasters?” It took Nero a few seconds to recall that there had been some attempt made at a scientific explanation for what had happened in Red Grave. A steam vent leading to rapid fungal growth leading to mass hysteria, or some nonsense. It was amazing just how far people were willing to suspend their disbelief in order to avoid accepting the existence of demons. “You think that’s what happened there?”

“What else?” Tonio’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t tell me you still believe those fairy tales the Order tried to force-feed everyone. All that crap about demons and the Dark Lord Sparda or whatever his nut was.”

“The Legendary Dark Knight Sparda,” Nero corrected, dodging the actual question. “Kyrie was the Order’s cantor. I had to sit through a lot of those garbage sermons. Didn’t convert me, but it sure taught me to sleep with my eyes open.”

“It’s too bad a few more people didn’t do that. Maybe if there had been fewer superstitious idiots around, they could have kicked the Order out while there was still a chance of getting some foreign investment around here.” Tonio scowled back toward the city. “Maybe then this place wouldn’t be such a stinking hell-hole.”

Nero couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “Trust me, hell smells a lot worse.”

Tonio shot him an odd look, but just then Panni called for the crew to start unloading, so he fell into step beside Nero as they followed the rest of the workers up the gangway. Nero had hoped to steer the conversation away from the inflammatory topic, but it seemed Tonio was just warming to his subject. “The worst thing is that even now, after the earthquake, when the Order’s leaders just abandoned everything and it was obvious the whole thing had been a scam, people are _still_ drinking that crazy sauce. And now we have all these con artists running around calling themselves devil hunters, promising to keep the demons from eating people if they pay up. It’s like the old mafia protection racket, only stupider. I can’t believe anyone is dumb enough to believe there are _actual monsters_ running around in this day and age.”

Nero paused to stare at him. “Tonio, were you here when this island got wrecked?”

“Nah, I was at school in Milan then. I saw the destruction when I got back, though.” He glanced over at Nero. “But you were here, right? You saw what happened.”

“Oh, yeah. I got a real close look.” Nero started hefting crates onto a cargo dolly. “Wait—what did you say just a second ago? About devil hunters?”

Tonio frowned. “That they’re con artists?”

“They.” Nero dropped the crate on the stack and whirled toward him. “You said _they_. Why more than one? How many do you know of?”

Tonio looked startled by the sudden urgency in Nero’s manner. “I… I don’t know, I guess there’s a few of them. What does it matter?”

“Just trust me, it does. Tell me about every hunter you can think of.”

Tonio’s brow furrowed as he ran a pallet jack under a wooden skid. “Well, there’s that ugly-ass RV that’s always tearing through town. You know, the one with the big neon signs.”

Nero cringed at the thought of what Nico would do if she heard her van so disparaged. “Yeah, I know about that one. Who else?”

“Then there’s the one that’s been working the south side.”

Nero leaned forward over the skid. “Where on the south side?”

“Around the old garment district somewhere, I guess.”

“You got an address?”

Tonio scowled. “Why the hell would I know that? Go ask someone who lives there.”

“Hey!” Nero turned to see Joe Panni glaring at them. “I’m not payin’ you guys to talk!”

Apparently irritated by Nero’s questions and the reprimand, Tonio moved off to another part of the ship. Nero went back to work with a smile on his face. He finally had something resembling a lead.

* * *

Kyrie was just setting dinner on the table when Nero returned home. “Welcome back!” she said when he poked his head into the kitchen. “You’re home later than I thought you’d be. I was worried you wouldn’t be in time to eat.”

The ragout smelled delicious, but Nero knew there was a more pressing odor to deal with, and it was the stench rising from his body. “Keep it warm for me, will you? I need to rinse off some of this grime before I go anywhere near food.” She nodded, a little disappointed. He knew how much importance she assigned to little rituals like eating as a family. “I’ll just be a few minutes. Don’t you kids go eating my portion,” he ordered with mock severity, drawing a few giggles from the children.

Nero jogged upstairs to collect a change of clothes. For once Zaffiro was alone in the playpen, while Rosso was fast asleep in their crib. Zaffiro pulled himself up by the side rail to peer over the top at Nero. “Want out,” he said. It had become a predictable greeting any time one of them entered the room.

“Not right now, kid. I gotta go take the world’s fastest shower.”

Zaffiro scowled, and his eyes shifted to the crib. “Want bruddah,” he tried instead.

Nero hesitated. The twins had always become anxious when separated, and he couldn’t recall them ever having been kept apart like this for more than a few minutes. They could hardly have placed themselves in this arrangement, though, so he had to assume Kyrie had a reason. “Your brother’s right over there, asleep. Let’s not wake him up, okay?”

He hurried back downstairs, stripped out of his filthy clothes, and scrubbed the stench of hard labor and old fish from his body. Devil hunting was a physically demanding occupation, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d worked up this kind of sweat. Maybe the occasional day of dock work would be good for him. Not that he really needed more muscle, but strength training was healthy, right?

The children were just finishing their food when he finally returned to the kitchen, but Kyrie had set her own meal aside with his. Nero dismissed the kids to their homework time and helped her clear the plates from the table before sitting down to his own bowl of stew. “Man, I’m starving after all that heavy lifting. This tastes great, Kyrie.”

“Hopefully it would taste great even if you weren’t starving,” she teased him. She took a bite of her own food and nodded in approval. “But I am happy with the way this came out. I was trying to use up the last of that discounted beef, and I threw a little of everything in with it. We’ll need to go to the market again tomorrow, though.”

“Which reminds me…” Nero fished an envelope out of his pocket, glad that he’d remembered to retrieve his day’s wages from the soiled jeans before throwing them in the laundry. “It’s not much.” It was, in fact, a pitifully small amount compared with the pay he usually received for hunting jobs, but the relief on Kyrie’s face when she counted the bills out on the table helped to quell his embarrassment at how little he’d earned.

“It’s enough,” she assured him. “If we’re conservative, this will at least cover our daily expenses.”

Nero stirred his ragout, a miraculous concoction of near-expiration meat and marked-down vegetables served in chipped secondhand crockery. He wasn’t sure it was possible to be any more conservative than they already were. He’d never met anyone who could stretch a penny farther than Kyrie.

Kyrie tucked the cash back into the envelope and laid it beside her plate. “Thank you for doing this, Nero. I know you’d rather be out hunting.”

“Don’t make it sound so selfless. I happen to like eating, too.” He shot her a wry smile, which she dismissed with a roll of her eyes before spooning more of the ragout into her mouth. “So, did anything interesting happen while I was out working today?”

She made an affirmative sound as she chewed. “You missed another red-letter tantrum.”

Nero looked up in alarm. “Are you okay?”

Kyrie blinked. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Those little buzzards are strong. They even managed to bruise me up a little.”

“Oh. I stayed well out of reach until it was all over, though I was more wary of the sparks than anything else.”

“Was it another double-header?”

Kyrie shook her head. “Just Rosso this time.”

“I saw he was in the crib on his own. What happened?”

“As near as I can tell, Zaffiro must have used his brother as a stepladder to escape the playpen. He got over the side somehow, and then Rosso realized he was still trapped while his brother was free. The fireworks started shortly thereafter.”

“That conniving little…” Nero laughed. “No wonder Zaffiro told me he wanted his brother back in the playpen with him.”

“He’s definitely a thinker, that one.” Kyrie sighed. “So now I can’t put them in there together, because one of them will escape. But if I separate them, they become even more fractious. You’ll have to come up with some new way to entertain them tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Nero looked up in surprise. “What’s tomorrow?”

“I’m working at the orphanage. I traded days with Sister Gratia, since your new job is on Wednesdays.” She cocked her head at him. “You’re watching the boys, aren’t you?”

Nero groaned. “Right. I forgot.”

“Do you have somewhere else to be?”

“I got a lead on that other hunter. I thought Nico and I could check it out tomorrow.” He watched her brow begin to furrow and quickly added, “But it can wait. It’s not urgent. We’ll just go on Friday.”

“Hmm.” Kyrie’s eyes dropped to her food, then slid sideways to the envelope. The crease between her brows deepened. “If you talked to this other person… do you think you would be able to get some of your hunting jobs back?”

“That’s the plan. One way or another.” He shrugged. “Nico’s pretty set on kicking his—uh, on… convincing him to back off our turf. But first we have to find out if he’s even the reason we haven’t had any requests. Could be there’s something else going on.”

“But you won’t learn anything until you find him.” Kyrie sighed and rubbed her forehead. “All right. I’ll stay home tomorrow. You and Nico go look for the hunter.”

“Kyrie, really, you don’t have to. It’s not a big deal if we wait a day—”

“No, it’s fine.” She smiled up at him, and for the first time since he’d returned home, he noticed the shadows beneath her eyes. “They can manage without me for a day. Sister Benedicta has been telling me to take a rest day anyway, and I am rather tired. I expect it’s just everything piling up this week.”

Nero reached over and took her hands. “Hey. Are you feeling okay? You’re starting to worry me a little.”

“Honestly, I’m just tired. I think I’ve finally found my limit, and it’s seven children.”

“I still don’t know how you managed when it was just three.” He gave her hands a final squeeze, then released them so she could finish eating. “I’ll take care of the kids tonight, if you want to go to bed early.”

“No, you shouldn’t have to do that. You worked all day.”

He fixed her with a look. “Oh, and I suppose you spent the entire day lying on the couch eating bonbons?”

“If I’d had any bonbons, I would have been tempted.” She frowned stubbornly. “But I did sit for most of the day.”

“Doing what?”

“I just caught up on the mending, and paid the bills, and wrote that recommendation for the planning committee…”

Nero raised his eyebrows. “Still waiting for the part where you weren’t working.”

She sighed and poked at her food. “I just don’t want to miss being there for them. When I was little my parents always made time for us to be together in the evenings, as a family.”

Nero glanced away. “Yeah, I remember.”

“I always loved that time with them when I was growing up, and I don’t want to break that routine with these children, even if I’m a little tired.”

“All right, I get it.” Nero stood and carried his dishes to the sink. “But you get some rest tomorrow, okay?”

“I’ll try,” she promised. “Rosso and Zaffiro permitting.”


	19. Chapter 19

Thursday morning, Nero rose early, turned off the alarm clock, made a simple breakfast, and got the kids out the door before Kyrie had even awakened. He covered her breakfast plate with a cloth and left it for her to find whenever she made her way downstairs before calling Nico.

From the multiple rings and the groggy greeting, Nero could tell that the phone had dragged her out of bed. “Get your ass in gear, sleepyhead. You find anything on that other hunter yet?”

“Not yet,” Nico grumbled. “I put out some feelers. Hell, Nero, it’s only been one day. I’m not a miracle worker.”

“Well, I am,” he grinned. “I got a lead. You wanna come help me kick his ass?”

“ _What?_ ” Nico suddenly sounded considerably more awake. “Hell, yeah, I’m in! I’ll be over in twenty minutes.”

“Meet me in the garage. Kyrie’s still asleep, and I don’t want to wake her.”

He packed up his weapons as quietly as possible and crept out to the van to wait for Nico, who arrived fifteen minutes later looking slightly sleep-rumpled but enthusiastic. She swung into the driver’s seat. “So where is this bastard?”

“South side, somewhere. We’re gonna have to look for him.”

“South side? That’s all you got?”

“Near the old garment district. Don’t complain; the two of us can canvass that whole neighborhood in less than an hour.”

The garment district had been in decline even before the fall of the Order. The old textile mill on the edge of the city had been abandoned for some decades, and the shops that had once sold wholesale fabric and handcrafted clothing to merchant ships had closed once the Order began importing their liturgical robes from a supplier in Italy and imposing heavy restrictions on independent trade. Now, with the island’s economy plummeting, most of the storefronts were empty, vacant windows boarded up or baring teeth of jagged glass.

There were, however, a few signs of life among the derelict buildings. Here and there a resident wandered over the broken pavement, burdened with shabby parcels. They cast sharp glances at the van as it lumbered down the narrow streets, its neon reflected by the windows that remained intact. A single bodega advertised groceries and discount household goods on a hand-lettered sign propped in its window.

They parked the van several blocks from the bodega and walked back, on the chance that they might be able to pass for potential clients of the hunter rather than competition when asking questions. The few people they passed on the sidewalk had no interest in speaking to them, so they headed for the bodega.

The owner, a once-paunchy man whose sagging flesh told a tale of slow privation, frowned at them as they entered. “Morning,” Nero greeted him.

“Good morning,” the man replied, still wearing the frown. “Something I can do for you folks?”

“Yeah, maybe.” Nero strolled casually up to the counter. “We’re looking for somebody. Heard there was a hunter around here. Somebody who could take care of… you know. Local vermin.”

“He means demons,” Nico cut in, ignoring Nero’s exasperated glare. “We’re lookin’ for a demon hunter. You got one around here?”

“Maybe.” The man’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and he made no attempt to disguise the way he weighed his visitors’ appearance and evident financial status. “You folks wanna look around the shop for a few minutes, I might be able to remember something.”

“Thanks. We’ll do that.” Nero stepped a few paces away and jerked his head for Nico to join him. “Nico. Buy something.”

She stared at him as though he’d sprouted a second head. “What? Why do _I_ gotta buy somethin’?”

“Because he’s not gonna tell us how to find the hunter unless we do.”

“Well, why’s it gotta be me? Why don’t _you_ buy somethin’, Mr. Smooth Negotiator?”

“Because I gave every cent I had to Kyrie so she could buy groceries for the kids,” he hissed. “And besides, you still owe me for that warehouse gig. So _buy something_.”

“Fine,” Nico sulked. She glanced around before grabbing a loaf of discount bread off a nearby shelf. “Hey, pops, I’d like to buy this.”

The proprietor scowled at the single loaf. “Is that all?”

Nero muttered something unflattering under his breath and snatched a mid-priced bottle of wine from a rack. Judging by the layer of dust covering the bottles, wine was well out of the budget of the local clientele. “And this,” he said, planting it on the counter.

Nico glared daggers at him, and Nero glared right back. “Do you want to find this guy, or not?” he growled.

“Fine,” she muttered, pulling out a wad of bills. “How much?”

Once she’d paid, the owner walked to the window and pointed out at a tall gray edifice a couple of blocks away. “See the building with the arches? That’s the old customs house. Try the second floor.”

“Thanks for your help,” Nero said, pulling Nico toward the door.

“Always happy to help a good customer.” The owner’s face contorted in a sly smile. “Come back any time.”

Nico insisted on going back to the van and driving it to the customs house, in part so she could stow her purchases in the kitchenette. “I pay that damn much for a bottle o’ wine, you can bet I’m gonna drink it,” she snapped. “Besides, this guy’s been stealin’ our gigs, he already knows we’re comin’ for him. No point in tryin’ to sneak up on him at this point.” She ran the van’s near wheels up on the sidewalk to keep it from blocking the single-lane road and threw it into park. “Let’s go whoop some ass.”

“Let’s try talking first. Maybe we can convince him of the need for professional courtesy without jumping straight to the ass-whooping.” Nero tucked Blue Rose beneath his coat and opened Red Queen’s case. “And if he doesn’t see reason, _then_ we’ll kick his ass from here to Capulet City.”

The customs house had been boarded up at some point, but the barricades had been pried off of one of the side doors, leaving splintered wood around the frame. Nero stepped carefully over the debris in the doorway and peered around the dim interior. Sunlight filtered through chinks in the boards over the windows, striping across the indoor twilight. Nothing moved other than dancing motes of dust. “Looks deserted,” he murmured to Nico.

“Well, that guy did say second floor.” Nico followed Nero into the building, blinking as her eyes adjusted. “Sure is creepy in here. Like a horror movie.”

Nero laughed. “You drove all the way through the Qliphoth and you think _this_ is creepy? It’s just an empty room.”

“That’s what makes it creepy. There’s nothin’ movin’ in here, but somethin’s got the air all stirred up.” She nodded toward one of the broader patches of light. Glowing particles swirled chaotically through the beam. “It ain’t _us_ makin’ that breeze.”

“It’s an old building. Probably just a draft. Come on.” Nero led the way to the stairs they could see opposite the front door. The steps were marble, broad and curving, a relic of a time when this had been a thriving trade center. Now rat droppings and dead leaves were accumulated in the corners, though a clear path ran down the center. “Somebody’s definitely been using this.”

“Yeah, well let’s hope he’s still up there.” Nico started to ascend, but Nero threw out an arm to stop her. “What?”

“Wait a second.” _Something_ wasn’t right here. Nero breathed slowly, reaching out as best he could with the senses he could control and hoping that the one he hadn’t yet mastered decided to kick in on its own. “I don’t like this.”

“There’s a lot I don’t like, startin’ with that S.O.B. stealin’ our gigs. Let’s go already!”

“Fine. Just keep your eyes open for anything weird.” Nero followed her up the stairs, but his hand strayed to Blue Rose’s grip.

The stairs led to an open lobby ringed with several doors. Nero picked one at random and pushed it open with his foot. Like the room downstairs, it was illuminated only by narrow beams of light, which showed some old trash and what might have once been a squatter’s camp in the corner. Undisturbed dust and leaves littered the floor. “Nothing in here.”

Nico had selected a different entrance. “Here, neither. Cobwebs all over the place, even on the door.”

The third room they entered was brighter; a few boards had been knocked loose over a south-facing window, letting in a stream of light. “Hey, hey, lookie here!” Nico jogged over to a pile of objects in the corner, which on closer inspection turned out to be crude furniture: Several small wooden crates were arranged as a table, with another serving as stool beside it. A thin pallet was wedged into the corner beneath a threadbare blanket. “Looks like somebody’s been livin’ here.” She ran a finger over one of the crates. “No dust. This is recent. And hey, look!” She pointed toward the far wall. “There’s a sword just like yours!”

Nero turned to look where she was pointing. “It’s not anything like mine,” he scoffed. “That’s a Caliburn. It’s barely a step above a practice sword.”

Nico crossed the room for a closer look. “But it even has the brake lever thingy like Red Queen!”

“They’re both Order designs, but Red Queen is a custom Durandal. The officer’s model. The Caliburn was standard-issue crap for foot soldiers. There’s a reason I built my own instead of using the one I was issued.”

“Well ex-queeze me for not bein’ a sword fanatic.” Nico reached for the weapon. “So where d’you reckon it came from?”

“They were mass-produced. I bet there’s dozens of…” The moment Nico touched the sword, the hair on the back of Nero’s neck prickled.

Nico turned to stare at him. “Of what?”

Suddenly the squelching pressure that preceded the opening of a portal pushed against Nero’s ears.“Nico, get out of here!” he shouted. Blue Rose was in his hand even before he turned to see the gate opening, a lurid red wound bubbling midair in the center of the room.

Nico bolted for the exit, but webs of red energy glistened into being across the doorway. “Shit. It’s sealed somehow!” She slammed a fist against the barricade and hissed in pain. “Some kinda magic ward or somethin’. I can’t get through!”

Nero had been caught in such devilish traps before, and knew that the only way to break the seal on the room was to kill whichever demon was generating it. “I’m gonna have to fight our way out. Get behind something and stay out of range.”

“Just mind your aim,” Nico called back. “Ain’t nothin’ here solid enough to stop bullets.” She ducked into the squatter’s corner, lifting the thin mattress to shield herself.

The demons appeared then, dropping through the hole in reality and staggering toward them. Nero emptied Blue Rose into the nearest, then drew Red Queen, twisting the ignition mechanism for the extra power it would provide. Normally he would have taken his time, enjoyed the fight a bit more, but he couldn’t chance a demon slipping past him with Nico trapped here. He had to eliminate these small enemies as quickly as possible, before something bigger and meaner came through.

He’d charged through a half-dozen Scarecrows when the room’s temperature dropped suddenly, and his panting breaths became clouds of steam. It was all the warning he had before an icy claw sang past his ear and lodged in the far wall. He whirled to knock the next projectile out of the air, then danced back as a Frost loomed up before him. The demon crouched and gestured, and Nero scarcely had time to dive aside before a spear of ice burst from the floor just where he’d been standing.

Recovering his balance, Nero charged forward and landed a flurry of blows, though all they succeeded in doing was scattering chips of ice from the creature’s protective armor. “Giving me the cold shoulder, huh?” Nero grinned fiercely. “Well, let’s heat things up a little.” He planted Red Queen’s tip into the floor, squeezed the release to flood the system with fuel, then twisted the ignition into overdrive. Flames burst from the exhaust pipes and sputtered down the edge of the blade where the fuel overflowed. “Light it up!” Nero shouted, swinging Red Queen with his full strength.

The flaming sword hissed as it cleaved into the Frost’s ice shield. The demon shrieked and tried to retreat into a cocoon of ice, but Nero levered his weight behind the blade and sliced through the Frost’s torso before it could fully encase itself. There was a burst of vapor as the demon disintegrated into ash and snow.

Nero spun in a circle, scanning for more threats, but aside from a distant sound like shattering glass, the room fell into silence. He replaced Red Queen and Blue Rose as Nico climbed out from beneath the mattress.

“Well that sure was excitin’,” Nico muttered. “Wonder if those guys took out our hunter friend. Though he’s not much of a hunter if he loses to the likes o’ them.”

“I don’t think they did.” Nero strode to the center of the room and brushed at the floor. The distinctive Solomon’s Noose was freshly scorched into the wood planks. “These demons were summoned, and I’m betting it was some kind of trap that triggered when you picked up that sword. Seems like someone else wanted to get rid of that hunter as much as we did.”

“Well, in any case, he ain’t here.” Nico turned to the door. “Looks like that warding spell or whatever is gone now, too.”

“Yeah. Let’s look around outside, see if we can find any sign of where he might have gone.” They hurried downstairs and back out through the door they’d entered. Nico started to walk around the outside of the building, but stopped when Nero called, “Hey, does the van look weird to you?”

The two wheels nearer the building were parked on the sidewalk, but Nero could swear that the chassis was tilting at a more severe angle than it had been when they left. Nico frowned at it for a second, then circled the van. “Shit. _Shit!_ ”

“What’s—oh.” Nero saw the damage as soon as he’d cleared the front bumper. Both tires on the street side were slashed open, the rims already bending beneath the weight of the monstrous vehicle. Between them lay a sea of pebbled glass fragments; the window in the side door had also been smashed out. “Damn vandals.”

Nico tested the door handle. It was unlocked. “Not vandals,” she hissed, yanking the door open. “Thieves. They broke the window to unlock the door.” She climbed gingerly inside, avoiding the shower of broken glass, and surveyed the damage. “Looks like they didn’t spend much time in here, though. Stuff’s a little tossed around, but nothin’s—” She broke off suddenly, and Nero saw her body go rigid.

“What’d you find?” He climbed in after her.

“It’s gone,” Nico breathed, staring at a place on the wall. She jerked forward and pushed through a pile of loose items that had fallen on the floor. “It’s gone!”

“What is?” Nero glanced around, wanting to help but unsure what he was looking for.

“My grandmother’s gun!” Nico sounded frantic. “The .45 she made! It was hangin’ right there!”

Nero saw the bare hook on the wall. He vaguely recalled seeing an old revolver mounted there, but he hadn’t paid much attention to it. “Was it valuable?”

“It’s irreplaceable!” Nico burst. “It was a Nell Goldstein original! What’s it matter what it’s worth?”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I was just trying to figure out why someone would take it.”

“It’s a gun. Guns are always worth something. But that’s not the point.” Nico wrapped her arms around herself, and Nero realized she was shaking. “It was all I had of her. My daddy got rid of everything else after she died. It was the only piece I had that she made.”

“Maybe we can get it back. Something like that’ll probably go on the black market, and Fortuna isn’t that big. Somebody will hear something.”

“I’m gonna kill ‘em,” Nico hissed. “If I find out who took it, I’m gonna put a .45 caliber bullet right between his eyes.”

Nero had seen Nico in many moods, but this cold, murderous fury was a new one. “Okay, look, we’ll talk to some people when we get back. But the first thing we have to do is figure out what to do about the van. You can’t drive it like this.”

Nico seemed to return to herself, and her shoulders slumped. “Right. I guess we have to have it towed. It’s gonna ruin the rims, though.”

“I think they’re already a lost cause.” Nero climbed in the front and checked the dash phone. “Weird. They took the gun, but left the electronics.”

“Probably saw us coming and got spooked.” Nico checked her mobile workshop. “Tools an’ Breakers are all still here, too. Though it looks like they took that box o’ spare ammunition Lady left…” She frowned. “Hey, didn’t you have some ammo on this shelf, too?”

Nero joined her. “I did, yeah. The custom stuff for Blue Rose.”

Nico’s eyes widened. “What caliber? Is it standard?”

“Blue Rose? It’s .45, but it’s overpressure. Top and bottom barrels fire different loads.”

“Shit. I hope they don’t try to load any o’ that in Nell’s gun.”

Nero shrugged. “If they do, they’ll get what they deserve when the whole thing blows up in their hand.”

Nico slapped his shoulder, hard. “An’ just what do you think that’ll do to my grandmother’s gun, huh?”

“Oh. Right.” He sighed. “Look, I’m gonna go find a phone booth to call us a tow truck.”

Nico glanced up at the dash phone. “Why not call from here?”

“Because I don’t know the number for a tow service. I gotta find a directory. You might as well stay with the van and make sure the thieves don’t come back.”

Nico picked up a wrench and twirled it menacingly. “I hope they do,” she growled. “I actually hope they do.”


	20. Chapter 20

“We are going to have to do something about this,” Kyrie sighed.

“Agreed.” Nero stared down at the crib. The toddlers were sleeping side-by-side as usual, but they were squeezed awkwardly in a space that had grown far too small for them over the past week. By Kyrie’s estimation they were now approaching the size and weight of four-year-olds, and they needed proper beds.

“I’ll let them nap on our bed today,” Kyrie went on. “I’d use the playpen, but I caught _both_ of them out of it yesterday. I’m going to have to start locking the bedroom door to keep them upstairs.”

“I figured that would happen eventually, but I didn’t think it would be so soon.” Nero rummaged through his drawer to find a shirt he didn’t mind risking. For all that fighting demons was a rugged and dangerous business, he’d damaged more clothing on crate splinters and loose nails in the two weeks he’d been working at the docks than he had in the past several _months_ of devil hunting. “What if we put them in my old bedroom? There are already two beds in there, and at the rate they’re growing, they’ll need separate beds soon enough.”

Kyrie frowned. “But then where will Flavia sleep?”

He measured the crib with his hands. “She’s so small, I bet she’d fit on this mattress.”

“Yes, but _where_? It would be awkward to put her in the boys’ room, when she’s the only girl.”

“What about up here? The crib fits. All we’d need is a cot frame for her.” Nero wasn’t keen on the idea of having any child older than a baby sharing their bedroom, as it meant he and Kyrie had virtually no privacy, but the twins were already nearing the age when that was going to become a problem.

Kyrie shook her head. “Flavia still needs to use the bathroom during the night sometimes, and I don’t want her trying to go up and down the stairs in the dark.”

Nero pressed his fingertips against his eyes, feeling as though he were trying to squeeze seven rounds into a six-shot revolver. “What if we move Scipio into Flavia’s room? Siblings share bedrooms all the time, especially at that age.”

“That still leaves us one bed short.”

“We swap out Flavia’s mattress for this little one, and we put her big bed in the boys’ room. That gives us two beds for Rosso and Zaffiro.”

“I’m not sure we can fit another full-sized bed in the boys’ room.”

Nero groaned and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know, then. We’ll have to work something out. I’ve gotta get moving, though; otherwise I’ll be late to work.”

Kyrie glanced at the clock beside their bed. “Do you have time for breakfast?”

“I’ll grab something on the way out.” He gave her a quick kiss. “See you tonight.”

Nero’s stomach growled as he hurried downstairs, but he restricted himself to a slice of bread and a handful of grapes—just enough to pretend he wasn’t heading to a full day of hard physical labor on an empty stomach. Of all of them, he reasoned, he could best afford to skip meals, since a portion of his strength came from his devil powers. Every meal he skimped on was one that they didn’t have to pay for, and he was determined to save every penny he could, especially since he knew he’d be footing at least part of the bill for the van’s new tires, wheels, and window glass, which had been on order for the last two weeks. Vehicle repairs were slow and costly on Fortuna, but there was no hope of getting the van to a mainland garage in its current condition.

Since the day they had investigated the customs house, they’d made no progress tracking down either the rival hunter or the mysterious person who had summoned the demons. Business remained slow: Nico had received only a handful of calls—one of which they’d been unable to take on because it was too far to travel on foot—and none of their clients had been able to pay more than a pittance. Still, Nero was grateful for _any_ hunting work. Any paying work at all, if he were honest, including the mind-numbing labor at the docks. At least it was a reliable income, if a small one.

He jogged up to the cluster of laborers just as Joe Panni waved them aboard a ship to start unloading cargo. Nero ducked into the back of the group, hoping the boss didn’t notice his late arrival, but Panni hooked Nero’s arm just as he was about to set foot on the gangway. “C’mere a minute,” Panni said, pulling Nero aside.

Nero braced himself for a reprimand for being late, but Panni had a distracted air, and scarcely glanced in Nero’s direction. “You and Tonio are pals, aren’t you?”

“I guess.” They’d had a lot more in common back when they were both teenagers in danger of failing Italian, and they hadn’t said much to each other since that first day, but Nero didn’t harbor any ill will toward him. “We went to school together.”

“You heard from him lately?”

Nero shook his head. “This is the only place I ever see him. Why?”

“He didn’t show for work yesterday, and he missed poker night before that. I called his place a few times, but there’s no answer. His landlady says she hasn’t seen him around, either.”

“You think he’s sick or something?”

Panni shrugged. “Landlady let herself in with the master key and said he wasn’t home. So if he’s sick, he’s bein’ sick somewhere else.”

“Huh. When was the last time anybody saw him?”

“What are you, a detective now?” Panni scowled, but answered the question. “I talked to him on the phone Monday afternoon. He didn’t work that day, but he said he was going to come in later to make some deliveries before poker.”

“Deliveries?”

“Yeah, sometimes people can’t be bothered to pick up their shipments down here, or don’t have any way to transport ‘em, so if it’s somethin’ small, we take it to ‘em for a fee.” Panni shrugged. “It’s easy money. Tonio can handle the truck, so he makes most of the deliveries. And before you ask, mister detective, I checked the manifest, and everybody scheduled for a delivery received their cargo that night. The truck was parked back here when I came in the next morning. So he didn’t run off with it.”

“Well, if he didn’t take anything from home, he probably didn’t skip town. Fortuna’s not that big. He’s bound to turn up.”

“I hope so. It’s gonna be hard to replace him.” Panni smiled grimly. “He usually lost at poker.”

After that Panni dismissed him to the ship, and Nero started in on the relatively mindless task of moving cargo to the warehouse. As he worked, he turned Tonio’s disappearance over in his mind. Fortuna really _wasn_ _’t_ that big, and much of its community was still close-knit and helpful; if Tonio had become lost or injured, someone likely would have found him by now and gotten in touch with his place of employment. That left only the option that Tonio hadn’t _wanted_ to be found, and that was unsettling. The economic hardships and general loss of faith had led to an epidemic of depression in the island’s residents, which in the first years after the fall of the Order had resulted in tragic outcomes for a few hopeless souls. But while Tonio had seemed bitter, even belligerent, he’d always been a fighter. There was nothing in his attitude that made Nero think he was at risk for giving up on life.

Still, he hadn’t spent much time with Tonio since they’d been in school, and he knew it was impossible to know what was going on inside another person’s head, no matter how stable or confident they seemed. He could only hope that Tonio had just gone on a bender or shacked up with someone, and would stagger back to work in a few days with a story to tell.

* * *

Kyrie had the twins with her in the kitchen when Nero arrived at the house that afternoon. “You’re home early!” she exclaimed, leaning away from her latest culinary creation-in-progress to give him a kiss.

“I worked through lunch so I could get out a little sooner.”

“You worked through lunch?” Kyrie frowned. “Did you have a chance to eat?”

“Yeah, I grabbed a snack on my break.” It wasn’t _completely_ untrue, Nero reasoned, though the “snack” had been a cup of coffee cut by half with milk he’d sneaked out of Panni’s mini refrigerator.

Kyrie’s brow furrowed, but she said nothing more.

To distract himself from the food smells that were making his empty stomach rumble, Nero turned to watch Rosso and Zaffiro, who were coloring at the kitchen table. “How have the trouble twins been today?”

“Perfect angels, as long as I didn’t try to put them in the playpen.”

He chuckled. “Not sure ‘angels’ is quite the right word, all things considered.” He leaned over to watch Rosso scribbling. “Whatcha drawing there, kid?”

“House,” Rosso replied, diligently filling a large shape with uneven gray circles. The picture was little more than a long rectangle topped with several cockeyed triangles, and it looked nothing like their home—but then, Nero wasn’t sure if the twins had even _seen_ the outside of this house. He was likely just imitating something he’d seen in a picture book.

Zaffiro was producing something more recognizable: a row of vaguely humanoid figures, two tall and two short. The head of one of the taller figures was framed with two squiggles of yellow, while the other three were crowned with the waxy sheen left by heavy scribbling with a white crayon. “Family portrait, huh?” Nero asked. Zaffiro nodded, and warmth spread through Nero’s chest as he examined the white-haired figure that must represent himself. He supposed it was only logical that the twins would see Nero and Kyrie as their parents, but it was still nice to be considered family. Some day, he’d have to tell them the truth, but for now they could all enjoy the endearing illusion.

Kyrie leaned over to look at the drawing. “Oh, that’s very good!” She stroked a hand over Zaffiro’s fine white hair. “You’ve both made such lovely drawings. We should put them on the refrigerator when you’re finished.”

Nero tugged lightly on a lock of Kyrie’s auburn hair. “Didn’t quite nail this, though,” he murmured.

Kyrie laughed. “Let’s call it creative license. I’ve never really wanted to go blonde.”

“Good. I like your hair as it is.” He brushed a few loose strands back over her shoulder. “Anything I can do to help in here?”

She shook her head. “I’m just getting an early start on dinner.” She hesitated and glanced up at him. “Would you like something to eat now, since you missed lunch?”

Nero’s stomach awoke at the thought of food, but he steeled his resolve. “Nah, dinner’s in a couple hours. I’ll just wait. Are the kids at the orphanage?”

“Yes. They’re having a special sports day today, so they’ll be late.”

“Right. I forgot that was today.” Nero watched the boys coloring for a moment longer—Zaffiro was now filling in the shape of the taller white-haired body with a _purple_ crayon, which baffled Nero; he didn’t think he’d ever worn anything purple in his life—then recalled the current conundrum facing their household. “I’m gonna go take a look at the bed situation, see if I can’t figure out some place to fit everyone.”

“All right. Call if you need help.”

* * *

Even after years of sleeping upstairs, Nero couldn’t help the wave of nostalgia that struck him as he stepped into the smallest of the old house’s bedrooms. Decades before, it had been Credo’s room; when Kyrie was a baby, the larger of the downstairs bedrooms had served as combination home office, sewing room and nursery. After their parents had died and Credo and Kyrie invited Nero to move in with them, Credo insisted that Kyrie move into the bedroom upstairs, while he installed himself in the larger downstairs bedroom. Credo had claimed the change was because he needed the office space to manage his paperwork for the Order, but Nero had always suspected the real reason was to avoid leaving his sister and her male best friend in adjacent rooms, unchaperoned. After all, Nero and Kyrie had never made any secret of their affection for each other; everyone had known a romantic relationship was inevitable.

When Nero had first moved here after a childhood spent in the orphanage, the compact bedroom had seemed the pinnacle of luxury. It was the first private room Nero had ever slept in, and even the slanting ceiling where the staircase cut a corner off the room’s height added to, rather than diminished, its charm. Even now, with two beds and a low bureau crammed into a space that had scarcely contained one teenage boy, the room felt more cozy than claustrophobic.

But no matter how warm and welcoming, the space here was undoubtedly limited. The low, angled ceiling ruled out bunk beds, and even replacing one of the beds with the smaller crib mattress would reclaim only a negligible area of floor. Nero moved to the next room, which had only marginally more floor space as it was now occupied by dual bunk beds and all the children’s books and toys. Kyrie was right; there was no room for an additional bed in here, at least without removing some of the existing furniture. But perhaps, if they pulled out the bookshelves and toy chests… Nero measured with his hands. It would be a tight fit, but he thought they could _just_ squeeze another bed frame in against the wall.

Nero moved to the narrow utility room sandwiched between the kitchen and bathroom. The only space here was above the linen shelves, which were far too high to be of use to the children. That left only the garage, and Nero had no intention of moving _anyone_ _’s_ living space to an area where he and Nico routinely tested new weapons or dragged hell-knows-what back with them on the van tires.

He wandered into the living room and stared at the corner where they had corralled Rosso and Zaffiro inside a ring of book boxes—some of which remained stacked behind the sofa, even now. There _was_ a little space against the wall where he could move the kids’ bookshelf, if Kyrie would let him shuffle the seating area around a little. That only left the toys to be moved. “Hey, Kyrie. You got a second?”

“Be right there,” she called back. The oven door rattled, and a moment later she poked her head around the corner. “Yes?”

“What do you think about making a reading nook for the kids out here? Put all the books on that wall, maybe get a couple little chairs or something?”

She squinted, envisioning it. “It would be a tight fit, but I think it’s doable. Would that make enough space for another bed in their room?”

“Possibly. Depends on the frame. Does the orphanage have anything we can borrow that would fit that crib mattress?”

“You mean besides the crib it’s in? I’m not sure. I don’t know how we’d move anything bigger than that, though. Nico transported the crib for me, but as long as the van is out of commission, we’ll have to hand-carry anything we want to borrow. That’s a long walk with a bed frame.”

“We’ll deal with that when we have to. I bet I could get one or two of the guys at the dock to help out in exchange for dinner, or something.”

“Really? That’s a lot of work for one meal.”

“Not for one of your meals, it isn’t. I’d carry a bed _twice_ that far to eat your cooking.”

“I see.” She arched her eyebrows, trying and entirely failing to suppress a smile. “So _that_ _’s_ why you’ve stuck around here for so long.”

“Among other reasons.” He leaned in to steal a kiss. “You know, I’m gonna be _really_ glad when we can have our bedroom back to ourselves.”

Her reply was lost in the sound of chipper young voices as the front door swung open. “Kyrie! Nero!” Carlo called, stumbling through the tangle of children trying to squeeze into the house simultaneously. “Guess what?”

“Guess? Okay. Let’s see…” Nero made a show of thinking. “You saw an elephant riding a bicycle.”

“That’s silly,” Kyle declared, but only after he’d laughed.

“There’s a new baby at the orphanage!” Carlo went on, unable to contain his news any longer. “A real little one!”

Kyrie exchanged a surprised glance with Nero. There hadn’t been many new children in the past year, and usually the orphanage staff had an inkling that a child was being surrendered at least a few days before it arrived—especially in the case of infants, due to the extra care and preparation required. “Oh? Do you know where it came from?”

Carlo shook his head, but Julio spoke up. “A man brought him in this afternoon. I heard him talking to Sister Benedicta. He said he found the baby in a collapsed building down by the waterfront. He said nobody was around, and it didn’t look like anybody was living there. Sister Benedicta thought somebody must have just left him there, because he looked real sick. The baby, I mean, not the man.” Julio looked more worried than excited about the new resident. “She said she had to call the doctor right away.”

The concern showed on Kyrie’s face then, too, and Nero knew why: Illness of any kind was a threat to the orphanage, considering how closely quartered all the children were. “Well, I’m sure she’ll let us know more about it later,” she said. “Now, why don’t you children go—”

There was a squeal of surprise from the direction of the kitchen, and Nero and Kyrie bolted toward the sound. They found Flavia standing in the door to the kitchen, exchanging wide-eyed looks with Rosso and Zaffiro, who were still seated at the table amid a sea of crayons and paper.

Nero laughed to conceal his panic. The other children hadn’t seen the twins since a few weeks ago, when they’d looked like infants. “Hey, looks like we forgot who was downstairs!”

Julio, taller than the other children, was best able to see around the bodies blocking the door. Surprise was plain in his voice. “Nero, who’s _that?_ ”

Kyrie hurried into the kitchen to defuse the tricky situation. “Children, you can’t have forgotten Rosso and Zaffiro already.”

The younger children merely looked puzzled, but Julio shot Nero a frown. “But Rosso and Zaffiro aren’t that old.”

Nero appreciated that Julio wasn’t making a bigger scene, but he didn’t have an easy answer. “Roll with it,” he pleaded in a low voice. For the benefit of the other children, he said more loudly, “I mean, you probably don’t recognize them because they have so much more hair! They grow so fast at this age, don’t they?”

“They really do!” Kyrie smiled and smoothed Rosso’s hair. “But it’s almost time for the boys to go back upstairs, isn’t it, Nero?”

Zaffiro let out a sound that Nero knew from experience would soon ramp into a roar of discontent. The twins knew exactly what “upstairs” meant, and they were never in favor—but a tantrum here, in front of the other kids, would be disastrous. “It sure is.” Nero scrambled to think of what would keep Zaffiro calm. Books! Zaffiro liked books. “And guess what? I have a surprise for you two. I’m gonna tell you a really exciting story when we get up there.” He hastily tucked one child under each arm, waded through the sea of children in the doorway, and fled to the stairs.

Behind him, he heard Kyle complaining to Kyrie. “But Nero never tells _us_ stories!”

“Oh! Well, would you like him to read you one tonight?” Kyrie covered his retreat. “I’m sure he’d be happy to.”

By the time they reached the bedroom, Zaffiro was in full pout. “I want to read on my own,” the boy declared. He’d proved to have a surprising aptitude for language. A couple of weeks ago, Kyrie had started the twins on alphabet games, in part to give them something to focus on other than escaping the bedroom. Within a few days, Zaffiro had been able to pick out words on the page. By the following week, he had begun reading books on his own.

Rosso’s reading skills weren’t quite so advanced yet. He scowled at his brother, then up at Nero. “ _I_ wanna story!”

Nero groaned and slumped to the floor. “You two have never agreed on anything in your entire lives, have you?”

Rosso climbed into Nero’s lap. “Tell a story,” he insisted.

Zaffiro retrieved a picture book from the stack beneath the crib and plopped down beside Nero, determined to show how immune he was to the lure of being told a story by someone else. “ _I_ _’m_ reading.”

Nero sighed. “Fine. Zaffiro, you can read if you want, but I’m gonna tell Rosso a story.” Of course, that required him to think of a story. What did you tell kids of this age? He hadn’t read much as a small child, and he’d never paid much attention to fairy tales…

Well. There was _one_ story he knew forwards and backwards, though the trick would be sanitizing it for not-quite-four-year-olds.

“Once upon a time,” he began, “there were two kingdoms. One kingdom was full of people, while in the other kingdom lived… big, scary monsters. Monsters who liked to _eat_ people.” Rosso giggled at that, and Nero felt a surge of relief. _Of course_ they wouldn’t be easily frightened. Whose kids were they, after all? “One day, the, uh, king of the monster kingdom decided that he wanted to invade the human kingdom and eat up _all_ of the people.” He moved his fingers toward Rosso in a chomping motion, and the boy squirmed away, laughing. “The monster king got his army together and said, ‘Humans are tasty! Let’s go across the sea and have a big old roast-human feast!’ But then one of the monster king’s knights got up and said, ‘Hey, king, maybe we shouldn’t. Humans are kinda cool, you know? They invented things like rock ‘n’ roll, and hamburgers, and…” He glanced around the room for inspiration, and his eyes fell on a toy truck in the playpen. “…and hot rods, and race cars! Let’s not eat them.’ But the monster king said, ‘Nope, I want humans for breakfast, we’re _definitely_ invading!’ So the knight said, ‘Well, fine, then. I’m gonna fight you and protect the humans and all their awesome stuff.’”

As he spoke, Nero cast a sideways glance at Zaffiro. The boy’s eyes remained fixed on the book in his lap, but he hadn’t turned a page since Nero had begun speaking. As Nero described a great battle, embellishing it with a handful of exciting details from some of his own fights, Zaffiro tensed at all the same places that Rosso did.

“And so,” Nero finished after he’d run out of child-safe anecdotes, “After a full night of fighting, the sun rose, and all the monsters that were left ran away from the legendary knight and swam back across the sea to their own kingdom. The human king was so happy to be saved that he told the knight that he could stay and live with the rest of the people there, even though he was a monster himself. And then a beautiful princess fell in love with the knight, and they got married and settled down to raise a family. Soon, the princess had twin boys with white hair, and… and everyone was very happy. The end.”

Rosso’s hands went to his own white hair, and he grinned at his brother. “Us!”

Zaffiro said nothing, but finally turned a page in his book.

“So, what do you think? Was that a good story?” Nero tapped Rosso on the nose.

“Yes!” Rosso cheered. “Good story.”

Nero glanced at Zaffiro. “How about you? Did you like it?”

Zaffiro turned another page. “I was reading.”

Nero stared at him for a few seconds. “You know, in forty years, you are still going to be the same stubborn S.O.B. you are right now, and it will be even _less_ cute.”

Rosso cocked his head at Nero. “What’s ess-oh-bee?”

Damn it, there was the kid’s profanity detector again. “It means… Stuck On Books. Someone who reads a lot instead of listening to what other people are saying.” Nero scooped up both boys as he stood, depositing them on his own bed. “Okay, time for some rest. You don’t have to sleep if you don’t want to. You just have to stay on the bed. Deal?”

Zaffiro clearly interpreted this as a negotiation. “I want to read.”

“As long as you stay on the bed. _Capisce?_ ”

Zaffiro nodded. “ _Capisco_.”

Nero’s brain stuttered to a halt, and he stared for a moment. “Since when do you speak Italian?”

The boy merely cocked his head, looking as surprised as Nero.

No, that was absurd. There was no way Zaffiro could have learned a foreign language; he wasn’t even in school yet. He’d probably just heard Kyrie use the word at some point, and parroted it back. “Go to sleep,” he said. “Or don’t. Just… stay put.”

Nero locked the bedroom door behind him and descended into the excited chatter of the rest of the household, wondering—not for the first time—how long he could keep so many balls in the air before they all came crashing down on his head.


	21. Chapter 21

Nero was awakened far too early the next morning by the insistent trilling of the telephone. Wishing for the thousandth time he’d gotten around to installing that extension in their bedroom, he staggered down the stairs to answer it, leaning hard on the banister to keep from stumbling over his own feet.

The voice on the other end, muddled by that irritating clicking on the line, belonged to Joe Panni. “You free to work today?” his boss asked. “Tonio’s still missing, and I got a freighter coming in this morning. Could use a couple extra hands. I’ll pay you the regular rate.”

Nero was just awake enough to remember what day it was. “This morning, sure, but I gotta be outta there before ten,” he mumbled into the receiver. “It’s my day to watch the kids.”

“You got kids?” Panni sounded surprised.

Nero laughed. “Yeah. Seven of ‘em.”

“ _Seven?_ You—” He could almost hear Panni shaking his head. “Whatever. Just be here as soon as you can. Ship’s due in at six.”

Nero squinted at the clock; it was already five thirty. He splashed cold water on his face from the kitchen sink and climbed the stairs to fumble into some clothes in the dark.

“Nero?” Kyrie’s sleepy voice responded to the squeak of the dresser drawer. “What time is it?”

“Early.” He slipped over to the bed and kissed her forehead. “I’m gonna pick up a couple extra hours at the dock, but I’ll be back in time for you to get to the orphanage, okay?”

“Okay.” She yawned. “There are some apples on the kitchen table. Take a couple for breakfast.”

It was sweet of her, but Nero had no intention of taking food out of the house. He kissed her again. “Go back to sleep.”

* * *

The interrupted sleep must have taken its toll, because by midmorning, Nero was utterly exhausted. He had paused to rub his eyes, leaning heavily on a stack of crates, when a cup of coffee appeared beneath his nose as if by magic. He blinked down at the offering, then traced the arm attached to it to find Joe Panni staring at him expectantly. “Thanks,” Nero mumbled belatedly, taking the cup. He swilled the bitter liquid and hoped it contained extra caffeine.

Panni kept staring at him as he drank, and the reason for it was revealed when he burst, “Look, I know you got old man hair, but there ain’t no way you’re old enough to have _seven kids_. What, do you got a whole harem of women at home poppin’ out babies, or somethin’?”

Nero nearly choked on his coffee. “Just one woman,” he said when he’d recovered, “and I’m pretty sure she’d murder me at the _word_ harem. But she works at the orphanage, so the kids pile up pretty fast.”

“Oh.” Understanding cleared Panni’s face. “So they aren’t really, you know, _yours_.”

Something in his tone reminded Nero of that ever-present stigma Kyrie had complained of, and he bristled. “You wanna try that again?”

Panni recognized the challenge for what it was and held up his hands in surrender. “I just mean—you know. Biology.” He hurried to change the topic, and his gaze lifted above Nero’s face. “So is it a fashion thing, or what?”

Nero blinked. “Come again?”

“Your old man hair. I see kids nowadays with blue, purple, all kinds of colors, but never white.”

Nero shrugged. “Just grows that way.”

“Really?” Panni’s eyebrows rose. “Never seen that in somebody your age. You albino, or somethin’?”

Someone really needed to introduce Panni to the concept of _tact_ , Nero decided, but he was too tired to get into it just now. “Or something. Runs in the family.”

“What, _all_ of you have white hair?”

Nero nodded. “My old man and his brother both. Since they were babies.”

“Huh. Your grandparents, too?”

“I, uh, never met my grandfather.” Oddly, Nero realized, most of the statues of Sparda around the island had been monochromatic, and had been more concerned with portraying his horns than his hair. “But I’m pretty sure my grandmother was blonde.” Trish was, anyway. Most of the time.

“Weird.” Panni dismissed the topic with a shrug. “Well, anyway, I appreciate you comin’ in on such short notice today.”

“No problem. I can use the extra cash this week. My other job’s been kinda quiet.”

“You can have Tonio’s other shifts, if you can spare the time. They’re listed on the board.” Panni shoved his hands in his pockets. “I sure wish I knew where the hell he’s got to, though.”

“Yeah, me too.” Nero finished his coffee. “Let me check with Kyrie about the hours, and I’ll let you know which shifts I can take. We’ve got a couple kids too young for school, so one of us has to stay home with them most days. Which reminds me—what time is it?”

Panni checked his watch. “Nine forty.”

“Shit, I gotta get moving. Kyrie’s gotta be at the office by ten.” Nero crumpled the paper cup and pitched it into a rubbish bin. “Sorry to run out halfway through, but…”

“It’s okay. Most of the big stuff is down, and the other guys can handle the rest.” Panni clapped Nero on the shoulder. “See ya, kid.”

* * *

Nero found Kyrie waiting by the door when he reached the house, only minutes before the hour. She gave him a quick kiss as she pulled on her coat. “The boys are in our bedroom, but I promised them they could come downstairs to play once you were home.”

“Sure, as soon as I clean up.” Nero tugged at his sweat-soaked collar. “Remind me tonight, we need to talk about work hours. I’ve been offered some extra shifts.”

“Oh, good! They must be pleased with your work, then.”

“I guess so, but it’s only because Tonio has gone missing.”

“Tonio?” Kyrie blinked. “Football captain Tonio?”

“Yeah. He worked a few shifts with me, but he vanished a couple days ago.” Nero shook his head. “I’ll fill you in later. You’d better get going; it’s almost ten.”

“Right. See you tonight.”

Nero locked the door behind Kyrie, then headed straight for the bathroom. He’d dashed out without so much as brushing his teeth that morning, and after hours of hard labor he felt unbearably filthy. He scoured the film of sleep and stale coffee from his mouth, then climbed into the shower and let the scalding water soak into his overworked muscles. The gentle caress of heat on his shoulders was relaxing, and the patter of water on tile was so soothing…

Nero jerked awake just as he began to lose his balance, and he slammed a hand against the wall to stay upright. _Damn_ , he knew he was tired, but falling asleep on his feet was another matter entirely. He switched the tap to cold and hissed as icy water cascaded down his spine.

Cleaner, but somewhat shaken by how deeply fatigue had gripped him, Nero wrapped himself in a towel and climbed the stairs to the bedroom. His legs burned on the ascent, and he found himself hoping the boys were asleep so he could just flop on the bed and take a nap.

The twins were not so cooperative. Zaffiro was sprawled on his stomach on the bed, feet kicking lazily as he read a book. The bed pillows were spread around on the floor, and Rosso was balanced precariously on the dresser, weight shifted forward as though preparing to jump from there to the crib.

“ _Stop!_ ” Nero ordered. “Rosso, what are you doing?”

Rosso looked over in surprise. “Walking around.”

“You walk on the floor, not on the furniture. Get down from there.”

“But the floor is lava!” Rosso protested. “He said if I touched it, I lost the game.”

Nero glared at the boy on the bed. Zaffiro didn’t look up, but his waving feet kicked a little faster. “The floor is not lava, Rosso. I’m standing on it. Your brother is only trying to get you in trouble.”

“I am not,” Zaffiro declared without looking up from his book. “He wanted to play a game.”

“All he wants to do is read,” Rosso pouted. “He won’t play with me.”

Nero removed Rosso from the dresser and deposited him on the bed beside his brother before rummaging in a drawer for clothes. “Trust me, kid, in a few years you’re gonna wish he played with you a little less. He’s really got a thing for mind games.”

Zaffiro looked up at last, eyes flaring with interest. “What’s a mind game?”

Nero shook his head. “You’ll figure it out eventually, but I’m not gonna be the one to teach you.” Once dressed, he tossed the towel over his shoulder. “Kyrie said you could play downstairs, so if you promise not to stand on any more furniture, you can come down with me.”

That put them in a more cooperative mood, and they barreled downstairs so quickly that Nero didn’t even have time to warn them to slow down. By the time Nero reached the main floor, the twins had already vanished into the boys’ bedroom. Rosso was digging through the toy chest, while Zaffiro was hunting through the bookshelf.

Nero’s jaw stretched in a yawn. He knew he should keep an eye on the boys, but he supposed he didn’t have to be in the same room with them, as long as he was within earshot. He’d worked hard that morning. Maybe he would just stretch out on the couch and relax a little…

* * *

Something small and blunt jabbed into Nero’s arm. He ignored the sensation, his limbs too heavy to brush it away. The poke came again, harder this time. Then something seized his arm and wiggled it. Nero grunted and opened one eye.

Four pale blue eyes bored into his, unblinking and expectant. “He’s awake,” observed one of the twins.

Nero yawned and stretched, feet bumping the armrest at the end of the couch. His entire body ached. “What is it?” he mumbled.

“We’re hungry.” Zaffiro frowned at him. “I can’t reach the counter. You said no standing on furniture. Does that mean kitchen chairs, too?”

Had Nero been a little less groggy, he would have admired the boy’s analytical precision, but in his current state he was only regretting having made such a rule. He glanced at the clock, which read a little after one. “Right. It’s past lunchtime, isn’t it.” He pushed to his feet and braced through a wave of dizziness that nearly put him back on the couch. Why couldn’t he shake off this fatigue? He almost never slept in the middle of the day.

Kyrie had left a plate of sandwiches for them. Nero gave one to each child and stared at the third. He knew he should probably eat _something_ , but the fatigue and a growing ache in his abdomen made him doubt whether it would improve his condition. Maybe he’d try later, when he was more awake. He filled a glass of water for himself and sank into a chair to watch the twins eat.

Rosso polished off his food quickly and began playing with the crumbs on his plate. “When can we go to the house?” he asked suddenly.

Nero blinked. “What do you mean?”

Rosso turned and pointed toward the refrigerator, where Kyrie had affixed the boys’ crayon drawings amid the vast collection of school craft projects and juvenile artwork. Nero realized Rosso was indicating the lumpy, multi-peaked building he’d drawn the previous day. “I want to go back to the house.”

“Is that a house you made up?”

Rosso shook his head. “I dreamed about it. I want to go back there.”

Dream interpretation was well beyond Nero’s reach. “Maybe you’ll dream about it again tonight. That’s like going back, isn’t it?”

The boy’s lip extended in a pout. “No, I want to go back _for real_.”

“Mother will take us there,” Zaffiro put in.

Nero frowned. “I don’t think Kyrie knows where that house is, either.”

Zaffiro shook his head firmly. “No. _Mother._ ” He pointed at his own drawing on the refrigerator.

Nero stared at the crayon drawing. He’d naturally assumed the adults in the family portrait represented himself and Kyrie, but if that long blonde hair hadn’t been a mistake…

_White hair runs in the family._

It was impossible, though, wasn’t it? Nero was no expert on child development, but he knew early childhood memories rarely persisted beyond a few years. The twins had been reduced to infancy, and while they had remembered what their mother looked like then—at least, insofar as they had thought Trish was their “mama”—there was no reason a boy of four should be able to recall someone he hadn’t seen since he was a year old. Yet somehow, Zaffiro had retained a mental image of _both_ his parents. That was likely all it was; the boys didn’t seem to question their new names, or how they had come to be here, or who Nero and Kyrie were, so they obviously didn’t remember much about their own identities. Just lingering impressions, perhaps.

Still, it was fascinating that they could remember this much. Perhaps their early-life memories were as resilient as their half-devil bodies. “You know,” Nero mused aloud, “You may be the first artist in Fortuna’s history to do a portrait of Sparda in his human form.”

Zaffiro cocked his head and frowned. “What does that mean?”

Nero shook his head and banished all the questions about his family that crowded at the back of his mind. “Nothing. Finish your sandwich. We have a lot of work to do after lunch, and I’m going to need your help.”

* * *

The after-lunch project Nero had in mind was moving the books and toys so he could rearrange the boys’ bedroom. Enlisting Rosso and Zaffiro’s help not only reduced Nero’s workload, but kept the boys out of mischief. Zaffiro declared himself in charge of moving and reshelving the books—“I can even put them in alphabetical order!” he bragged—while Rosso gleefully scooped up armloads of toys and deposited them in a pile on the sofa. Nero was well aware they would spend as much time reading and playing as putting things away, but at least it would keep them safely out of the room while he was moving furniture around.

Nero swallowed two aspirin to mute the pounding in his head and hauled the low bookshelf into the corner of the living room, then shoved the toy chest out into the hallway to clear space while he moved the beds. With the twins occupied, he spent several minutes shifting and rotating the bunks around the bedroom, until at last he found an arrangement that would allow another full set of bunk beds to be squeezed into the room. “Bringing our maximum foster capacity to eight,” he muttered under his breath. “Which is about four more than we can afford.”

He was leaning against one of the bunks, catching his breath and willing the pain in his stomach to vanish, when Kyrie returned home. He heard her asking the twins what they were up to and leaned out in the hall to greet her. “Hey! You’re home kind of early, aren’t you?”

“Sister Benedicta decided to close the office for the afternoon. Some things happened.” Her expression told him she didn’t want to discuss it in front of the children, and he nodded. “How’s the room coming along?”

“Come see for yourself.” He steadied her as she climbed over the toy chest that was blocking the hallway. “If we get a bunk the same size as the others, it’ll fit against the wall, there. It’s a tight squeeze, but there’s room for the toy chest right at the end.”

“Good. I don’t mind having the books out in the living room, but I’d rather keep all the toys in here. I spoke with Sister Benedicta, and she’ll lend us as many beds as we need. There are still several bunks in storage from the wing that had to be closed.”

“Okay. Next time I’m down at the docks, I’ll ask some of the guys if they can help us move a set of beds.”

“It sounds like it’s all coming together.” Kyrie smiled up at him. “Now we just have to reclaim the living room. Zaffiro has about half the books shelved. Rosso has stacked toys on every horizontal surface. He claims he’s putting them in alphabetical order, too, but I’m not sure what alphabet he’s using.”

Nero chuckled. “Well, I’ll move the toy chest back in, and he can put them in order right back in the box.” He stepped out in the hallway, bent, and hefted the heavy wooden toy box.

Or tried to.

He managed to lift one end of the chest a hand’s breadth off the floor when his vision tunneled and a dull roar overlaid his hearing. The last thing he heard before everything faded out was Kyrie calling his name.


	22. Chapter 22

“Kyrie, I’m fine.”

She crossed her arms. “Nero, you _fainted_. You are not fine.”

“I did not faint.” Nero struggled upright on the lower bunk where she’d forced him to lie down. “I just got dizzy for a second.”

“And then you fell on the floor, unconscious. That’s called fainting.” She pushed him back down. “Don’t move.”

“Seriously, I’m fine—”

She loomed over him, fierce and stern. “I said _don_ _’t move_.”

He knew better than to disobey when she had that look on her face, so he sank back and stared at the springs on the underside of Julio’s bunk, feeling foolish and irritated by his own weakness.

Kyrie reappeared a minute later bearing a plate piled with apple slices and the sandwich he hadn’t eaten. She helped him sit up before depositing it in his lap. “Eat.”

Nero rolled his eyes. “Kyrie, you don’t have to fuss over me. I’m just a little tired from working this morning. It’s not a big deal.”

“Oh, really?” She snatched the plate away and, before he could react, yanked his T-shirt hem up above his chest. “And is that why I can see every one of your ribs? Because you’re _tired?_ ”

Nero refused to meet her eyes as he pulled his shirt back down.

The plate landed in his lap again. “I know you ate dinner last night, because I watched to make sure. But you haven’t eaten breakfast or lunch in days, have you?” Kyrie knelt on the floor beside the bed and stared up at him. “What is going on, Nero? Why aren’t you eating?”

Nero stared at the food, reluctant to touch it even though his stomach was churning in anticipation. “The less I eat, the more the kids can.”

“Oh, Nero.” Kyrie gripped his hand, and when he could bring himself to look at her, he saw tears in her eyes. “Starving yourself isn’t helping anyone.”

“We’re short on money and food. I can go a lot longer without eating than anyone else can.”

“And if you can’t work, because you’re weak from hunger? If some demon wounds you, because you don’t have the energy to evade it? Whom will you be helping then?” She shook her head. “I know you’d do anything for the children—and I love that about you—but we need you strong and healthy.”

Nero saw movement at the door and glanced toward it. The twins peered in, undisguised concern on their faces. “Hey, kids.” Nero plastered on a smile. “Everything’s fine.”

“You fell down,” Rosso said.

“Yeah, I did. But I’m okay.” Nero felt Kyrie’s gaze burning into him and waved the white flag. “I’m just gonna have a little snack and rest for a minute. Can you guys finish up the books? Then we can all put the toys away together.”

The twins nodded and returned to the living room. Kyrie squeezed his hand. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Nero sighed and picked up an apple slice. “It’s weird. I don’t even really feel hungry. Just exhausted.”

“You’ll feel it once your stomach remembers what food is. But eat slowly.” She shifted her position to lean against the bed beside his knees. “You know, for all your talk about how much you love my cooking, I’m not sure what to think when you stop eating it.”

Nero bent to kiss the top of her head. “I’m sorry. I really do love your cooking.”

“Prove it.” She tapped the plate. “Eat.”

Nero bit into the apple. At the taste of the tangy, sweet juice his entire mouth came alive, and he realized just how hungry he was. He made short work of the contents of the plate, and only Kyrie’s insistence that he take it slow and let his stomach adjust kept him from going back to the kitchen to refill it. To distract himself from his still-rumbling belly, he asked, “So what happened at the orphanage? Why the early closing?”

Kyrie sighed and tipped her head to rest against his leg. “You remember how the children told us about the baby that was brought in yesterday?”

“Yeah. Julio said they thought it was sick.”

“It’s worse than that. Sister Benedicta thinks the poor thing was starved and deliberately left to die. Which he did, late this morning. The doctor said nothing could be done for him. He never even woke up.”

Nero stroked her hair. “I’m sorry.”

“It was awful. He was so thin and weak, and so young.” A shudder ran through Kyrie’s body. “I don’t know what kind of monster would subject an innocent child to that kind of suffering. Even if his parents couldn’t afford to feed him, they could have brought him to us sooner, or taken him to the hospital. Someone would have helped him. But instead, they let him waste away.”

A creeping unease that had nothing to do with his hunger invaded Nero’s stomach. “Why did she think it was deliberate?”

“Because he was left exposed.” Bitterness saturated each word. “The man who found him said there were some clothes nearby, but whoever left him there hadn’t even wrapped him up. The baby was just lying there, unconscious, without even a blanket or diaper to protect him.”

Cold spread through Nero’s body. “Shit. _Shit._ ”

Kyrie turned to stare at him, startled by the rare profane outburst. “What is it?”

“That wasn’t a baby.”

She blinked. “What on earth are you talking about? I saw him, Nero. He can’t have been more than four months old.”

“And Dante and Vergil were in their mid-forties until a few weeks ago.” Nero leaned forward and grasped her shoulders. “I have to talk to the guy who found that baby. Do you have his name?”

“Sister Benedicta might.” Fear was creeping into Kyrie’s expression. “Nero, what’s going on?”

“Everything you described—naked baby, unconscious, emaciated, clothes on the ground, nobody else around—that’s _exactly_ what we found at that factory.”

“Oh, no.” Her hands went to her mouth. “You think the Nilepoch is here?”

“We knew it would come after them.”

“Yes, but I didn’t imagine it would be so soon. We were talking about _years_ , not weeks.”

“Yeah, but there’s a lot we don’t know about it. Maybe we were wrong about how it works, or maybe it didn’t absorb as much energy from Dante and Vergil as we thought.” Nero got to his feet. “I’m gonna call the orphanage and see if I can get that guy’s name. If the Nilepoch is on Fortuna, this whole island could be in danger.”

* * *

Sister Benedicta sounded tired when Nero spoke to her, but once he explained that he thought a demon was responsible for what had happened to the baby, she didn’t even hesitate in giving him the information he sought. “If it is a devil,” she told him with rare ferocity, “you hunt it down. No child deserves to suffer like that.”

Even with the good Samaritan’s name and telephone number, it took until the next day to arrange a meeting. On Friday afternoon, Nero followed the old man, who called himself Tasso the Tinker, through a string of dilapidated structures not far from Port Caerula as he rambled about his work—which turned out to be any handyman job available. “I was looking for pipe fittings,” Tasso explained. “It’s hard to get new parts, sometimes, but these condemned buildings are full of plumbing and electrical systems just going to waste, so sometimes I come down and see if I can salvage anything. Here it is, just around this corner.”

The roof of the building he pointed out was half collapsed, admitting daylight to the main part of what had once been a warehouse. A narrow path cut through the rubble in the center of the space, packing down the dirt that had washed into the building. Nero crouched to peer at it. “Somebody’s been through here a lot.”

“It’s a popular shortcut,” the old man said. “Some of the local workers use it to get from the docks to the bars on the next street. Saves a couple of blocks’ walking.”

“This is weird.” Nero touched a small circular depression in the dirt, about the size of a large coin. The mark was repeated every couple of paces, overlaying old footprints in the dried mud. “What do you suppose made this?”

Tasso squinted over his shoulder. “A pirate, maybe. With a peg leg.” He slapped Nero’s arm with the back of his hand. “Because we’re near the docks, you see?” He laughed at his own joke before leading the way to a pile of dark fabric in the corner. “Here’s where the baby was.”

Nero examined the slight disturbance in the dust, then rifled through the pile of clothing beside it. Most of the clothing was fairly generic, of the type most of his fellow dock workers wore, but the gray wool coat looked familiar. The pockets were empty; if there had been a wallet, someone had made off with it already. Nero tucked the coat into the crook of his arm and glanced down the path. “You said this goes along to the docks?”

“Sure does. Just go out and angle to the right, and you’ll see the ships.”

“Thanks. You’ve been a big help.”

Tasso nodded. “I hope the little boy will be all right. I wish I’d found him sooner, but I only get out here about once a week.”

Nero hesitated, then decided there was no reason to burden the kindly old stranger with the sad truth. “He definitely would have died here without your help. Thanks for bringing him to us.”

Leaving his guide, Nero followed the path into more familiar territory and made his way to the port. There was a freighter just pulling away from the dock, and Nero hurried to the office to catch Joe Panni before he left for the day.

Panni cocked his head in surprise when he saw Nero at the door. “Hey, kid. You could have just called about picking up the shifts.”

“Not why I’m here.” Nero tossed him the coat. “This look familiar to you?”

Panni turned the coat over in his hands. His eyes widened at a distinctive stain on the sleeve. “This is Tonio’s.”

“You sure?”

“Definitely. He bitched for two weeks after he got that oil mark on it.”

Nero swore under his breath.

Panni’s expression turned wary. “Where’d you find this? Where is he?”

Nero shook his head. “He’s not coming back, Joe.”

Panni moved to a chair and sank into it. “What happened?”

“Demon got him.” Nero paced to burn off the nervous energy. “I only found out about the attack last night, and I wasn’t sure it was him until you IDed the coat. The body was… hard to identify.”

“So why aren’t you out there killing it?” Panni’s voice was hard. “That’s your job, isn’t it? To kill those monsters before they hurt people? Why are you standin’ around here when our friend is dead?”

“Believe me, there is _nobody_ that wants this bastard’s head more than I do,” Nero growled. “I’m calling in my partners from the mainland, and we are gonna hunt this thing down or die trying.”

“Good. I don’t want to see you back here until it’s dead.” Panni’s hands tightened on the coat. “I’ll pay your standard rate, but that’s your _only_ job from now on, you hear me? You don’t work on the docks, you don’t work anywhere else. You find this thing and you kill it.”

“Brother, you got my word on that,” Nero promised. “This demon’s going down _hard_.”

* * *

In spite of his enthusiasm, Nero’s search stalled out within a matter of hours. None of his contacts had seen or heard anything about a demon matching the Nilepoch’s description, and no other unconscious children had turned up.

It was Lady who proposed an explanation, when he called her to give her the news. “This thing was designed to feed off of other demons, and now it’s on an island full of them. It’s very likely that it just switched back to its regular diet.”

“Which is good, because people aren’t getting hurt,” Nero sighed, “but bad because our chances of tracking it down just dropped into the underworld.”

“It still has to surface sometime,” Lady countered. “Especially since most of what’s left on Fortuna are weak, low-level demons. I can’t imagine one of those has enough power to kick it very far forward in time.”

Nero considered this. “And I guess if we keep wiping those out, eventually it will have to come looking for a new target.”

“I’ll finish up the gig I’m on and head your way in a few days. Trish is out of town on a big job, but I’ll leave word with Morrison to have her join us when she gets back. If the Nilepoch shows up again, we’ll be ready for it.”

“Yeah, we will. I’ll see you soon.”

Nero hung up the phone, and Kyrie glanced over from where she was cooking dinner. “Lady’s coming?”

“Yeah, but not for a few days.” Nero paced the short distance to the opposite side of the room and back. “I hate that there’s nothing I can do until this thing shows up again. I wish I could sense demons, like Trish or Dante can, and just go _kill_ the damn thing.”

“Well, you don’t have to stay idle while you wait. In fact, if Lady is going to be here soon, we should spend the next couple of days getting everything else done so you can focus on hunting once she’s here.”

“Everything else?”

“Starting with finishing the boys’ bedroom. We still need to get that bed from the orphanage.”

“Right.” He’d been so preoccupied with the Nilepoch, he’d all but forgotten what he’d been doing when he learned of its presence. “I’ll get it tomorrow.”

“By yourself?”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday. Julio can help me.” Kyrie looked skeptical, but Nero shrugged. “It’s not like I can go back and ask Joe Panni. I told you what he said.”

“All right.” She still sounded dubious. “But don’t let Julio hurt himself. He’s tall, but he’s still only twelve.”

“I’ll do the heavy lifting. I’ll just have him spot me so I don’t run into a car or anything.” Nero leaned closer and glanced into the pan simmering on the stove. “Of course, that means I’ll need to keep my strength up. You sure I can’t sample some of that now?”

Kyrie shot him a look. “You can sample it when everyone else does, at dinnertime. I know you’re still hungry, but consider the next hour as your punishment for not eating enough over the past— _Nero!_ ” She slapped his hand as he tried to spear a piece of chicken with a fork. “It’s not finished cooking yet, and I don’t want to test whether your powers can save you from salmonella poisoning.”

“Can’t help it. It smells really good. You’re a fabulous cook.” He ducked in to kiss her cheek, and used the spectral extension of his right arm to lift a bunch of grapes from a bowl on the opposite side of the stove.

“I saw that,” Kyrie scolded.

“Can’t get salmonella from grapes, though.” Nero popped a single fruit into his mouth, then darted the devil arm back across to replace the rest of the bunch in the bowl.

“Showoff.”

“You also can’t slap a hand that isn’t really there.” He winked.

Kyrie was trying her hardest not to laugh. “Get out of my kitchen and go do something useful.”

It was fun to tease her, but Nero knew the children would be home soon, so he complied. He emptied the wastebaskets around the house, and was just about to carry the bag of garbage out to the garage when he realized the house was too quiet. “Kyrie?” he called.

Kyrie’s head appeared, leaning into the hallway from the kitchen. “Yes?”

“Where are the twins?”

“Last I saw, they were in the living room.” Her expression shifted to one of alarm. “Are they not in the living room now?”

Nero checked behind the sofa to be sure. “Nope. They weren’t upstairs, either. I’ve just been all over the house.” He tested the doorknob. “And the front door’s locked.”

“Hold on, let me turn down the stove.” She vanished into the kitchen and reappeared a few seconds later, wiping her hands on her apron. “There aren’t that many places they can hide. They’re too big to fit under the furniture now.”

Kyrie searched the bedrooms and utility room while Nero checked the garage. They met in the living room again, exchanging headshakes.

“Nothing. That leaves only—” Nero’s sentence was cut off by the sound of something shattering outside. He unlocked the front door and yanked it open, expecting to see a culprit throwing something at the front of the house. Instead, the sight that greeted him was a little pile of terra cotta shards on the front stoop.

“Oh, no,” breathed Kyrie.

Nero turned and bolted up the stairs three at a time, noticing now what he hadn’t when he’d come in to collect the trash: The window above the crib, often left cracked an inch for ventilation, was wide open. From outside came the distinct sound of _giggling_.

Kyrie entered the room behind him just as Nero was climbing up on the sill. “Be careful,” she urged. “Don’t startle them, or they might slip and fall.”

“Fall?” Nero growled. “They’ll be lucky if I don’t punt their asses off the roof myself.” He crawled out onto the ledge, mindful of the loose tiles that shifted beneath his knees, and craned his neck to find the boys.

His search didn’t take long. “Look at me!” cried a voice from almost directly above him. “Brother, watch!” Nero twisted and saw Rosso wobbling on the narrow peak of the dormer, arms outstretched to balance himself. “I can walk on the very top!”

“I bet _I_ can do that all the way across,” came an answering voice, and Nero leaned out to see Zaffiro standing farther up, balanced on the highest peak of the roof. He swayed as he walked, adjusting for the slight breeze and his own movement, but he strode across the cap tiles with sure-footed grace.

Nero was furious, but he was also impressed.

Just as Zaffiro’s foot came down near the end of the roof, there was a crack of breaking tile. The boy’s arms windmilled for an instant before he toppled forward, scrabbling at tiles that broke loose beneath his clawed fingers. Rosso screamed a warning as Zaffiro rocketed toward the edge of the roof and a two-story drop to the ground—

Nero’s spectral arm shot out, grasping the back of Zaffiro’s collar just as he flew past the guttering. He stretched into the fall and swung the boy back toward him with less speed than he typically used on demons—after all, a four-year-old’s neck was delicate, and whiplash from such movement was a very real risk—then switched Zaffiro’s collar into his left hand before reaching up and retrieving Rosso with the devil arm. He dropped both twins back through the window into Kyrie’s anxious arms before crawling inside.

Rosso’s expression hovered somewhere between terrified and chagrined, but once Zaffiro had recovered from his near-death experience—a process that took approximately eight seconds—the older twin gazed impassively back at Nero and Kyrie.

Nero’s ire was stoked up for a proper hellfire lecture, but Kyrie stopped him with a raised hand. “Are either of you hurt?” she asked quietly. Both boys shook their heads. “Good.” She stepped aside and gestured for Nero to go ahead.

The short pause had been enough for Nero to rein in his rage, so the lecture contained less profanity and fewer threats than what had initially circulated in his mind. Still, there was plenty of heat behind his words. “You two are in _serious_ trouble,” he seethed.

“Why?” Zaffiro asked calmly.

Nero hadn’t expected that. “I think you know _exactly_ why.”

Rosso certainly did; he hung his head and looked very, very sorry. Zaffiro merely cocked his head to one side. “We didn’t break any rules.”

Nero stared back at him. “You were on the roof! On the second floor! You could have been killed!”

“You never said we couldn’t go outside,” Zaffiro returned.

It was a good dodge—one Nero couldn’t immediately dispute. He glanced at the window, his brain scrambling for an argument Zaffiro would accept, and his eyes landed on the crib just to one side of the window, where he’d shoved it so he could climb out. The crib rail was shorter than the window sill. Nero eyeballed the boys’ height. “How did you get the window open?”

Zaffiro saw where this line of questioning was going, and his expression turned wary. “It was already open.”

“But not all the way.” Nero crossed his arms. “You aren’t tall enough to reach it on your own. Which means you had to stand on the edge of the crib to do it. And I _know_ you know that standing on the furniture is against the rules.”

Zaffiro scowled at the floor.

“While we’re on the subject, here are some new rules: You are not allowed to leave this house without permission from Kyrie or myself. That includes through doors, windows, or any holes that may spontaneously appear in the wall. You are not allowed to engage in any dangerous behavior, including but not limited to climbing on or jumping off of very tall objects. And you are _definitely_ not allowed on the roof! Got it?”

The twins nodded in unison.

Nero was about to go on with the lecture when the acrid smell of something burning invaded the room. Kyrie’s eyes widened. “The chicken!” she cried, bolting for the stairs.

The last of the adrenaline drained from Nero’s system, and his shoulders sagged. “You kids are gonna be the death of me,” he groaned. “Either from stress, or from starvation.”


	23. Chapter 23

Saturday morning was dedicated to moving and installing the new bunk beds in the large bedroom. It took several attempts to explain to the children why the new arrangement was necessary. Carlo and Kyle were resistant to the idea of giving up their play space to two babies, but when Kyrie brought Rosso and Zaffiro down from upstairs to show them their new bunks, the older boys reluctantly acknowledged that their roommates weren’t really babies anymore and maybe weren’t _quite_ so bad. Scipio said nothing, but sulked openly.

Despite his willingness to help Nero transport and assemble the bed, Julio seemed the most uncomfortable with the idea of having the twins move into his room. “Nero, what’s going on, really?” he asked while they were alone in the room, screwing the bed rails onto the frame. “Those are not the same kids Nico brought home. I saw them. They were in diapers. I know you told us they had some sort of gland disorder that made them grow really fast, but even if that’s true, there’s _no way_ they could have gotten as big as Flavia in just a few weeks.”

“They are the same kids, but it’s…” Nero sighed. “Look, I’m just gonna have to ask you to trust me. I know it seems weird, but there’s a reason for everything. I just can’t explain it all right now.”

Julio’s brow furrowed. “You said those kids were your relatives, right?”

“Yeah, they are.”

“Is this something to do with your dad? And… you know.” He glanced toward the door to make certain they were alone. “Devil hunting?”

“Yes. It is. And that’s all I can tell you for right now. Please, just keep pretending everything’s normal for a little while longer, okay? Rosso and Zaffiro don’t know there’s anything unusual about them. Carlo and Kyle know something’s up, but they tend to follow your lead. I don’t think they’ll make an issue of it if you don’t. And hopefully if you all play it cool, Scipio and Flavia will, too.”

Julio shook his head. “I wouldn’t bet on that. Scipio has been mad about them being here ever since he got in trouble because of Rosso.”

“Well, pretty soon Rosso is going to be bigger than Scipio, so he’ll have to put up or shut up. Hand me that screwdriver, will you?”

Julio passed the tool to Nero. “So is it some kind of demon power making them get big super fast, or something?”

“Something like that, yeah.” Nero shook his head. “Look, when all this is over, I’ll explain everything the best I can. Just… give me some time, okay? Everything’s kind of up in the air right now.”

“Yeah, okay.” Julio flashed a grin. “I guess you can buy me off with some more gelato.”

* * *

The rest of the day was filled with predictable squabbling and shuffling of the pecking order, but at last things were settled: Julio, Carlo and Kyle claimed the top bunks, apparently affording them some measure of perceived status, while Scipio selected the lower berth in the farthest corner of the room. Rosso and Zaffiro seemed content to take the two lower bunks by the door, which put their beds close together.

Flavia was endlessly curious about the twins, constantly asking them questions or inviting them to play with her, and spent most of the afternoon underfoot in the boys’ bedroom. This led to even more griping and jostling for space, until Nero had to forcibly separate the kids into small groups assigned to the kitchen, living room and bedrooms.

By nightfall, Nero was tired and short-tempered from managing the high-strung children all day, but as they herded everyone through their nightly routines, Kyrie soothed him with a hand on his shoulder. “Just think of how nice and quiet our bedroom will be,” she whispered. “We’re leaving all the chaos downstairs.”

“I’d be more likely to enjoy our newfound privacy if I weren’t so worried about how this first night is going to go,” he murmured back. “Especially after that roof stunt Rosso and Zaffiro pulled. We may come down tomorrow and find all our kids pillow-fighting in the middle of the street, or something.”

Kyrie laughed. “Julio will keep them in line. Besides, they’re all so tired from today, I doubt they’ll be able to keep their eyes open for more than a few minutes. I know I’ll be out like a light as soon as I hit the pillow.”

“What, no celebrating having our bedroom back to ourselves?”

She stretched up on her toes to kiss him. “The spirit is willing, but the body is in dire need of a raincheck. Let’s celebrate tomorrow, when we’re both awake enough to enjoy it.”

Nero had to admit, the prospect of a night’s unbroken sleep sounded nearly as attractive as a night alone with Kyrie. “I must be getting old,” he muttered. “I actually agree with you.”

Despite his fatigue, worry kept Nero awake long after Kyrie had fallen asleep. The room seemed too quiet without the soft noises from the twins’ crib, and the memory of the boys’ recent mischief filled his mind with a thousand potential disasters. What if they sneaked out of bed and got into the kitchen? What if they turned on the stove, or found the knife block, or figured out how to unlock the front door?

After an hour’s fretting, he rose and slipped down the stairs to make sure everyone was still where they should be. Flavia’s night light showed her asleep in the small bedroom, and the arc of light it spilled into the hallway provided enough ambient illumination for Nero to make out the beds in the larger room. The top three were occupied, but the nearest bottom bunk—Rosso’s—lay empty. Nero reached for the light switch, ready to raise the alarm, when his night-adjusted eyes flicked to Zaffiro’s bed.

_Oh._

The twins were curled close together as they slept—just as they’d slept every night since they had come here, sharing warmth and security, and probably whatever inner sense allowed them to feel the other’s presence. Rosso’s bare feet peeked out from the edge of the blanket, and Nero gently tucked the covers around his tiny toes.

When he returned to his own bed, Kyrie rolled toward him, awakened by the jostling of the mattress. “Everything okay?” she yawned.

“Yep.” He kissed her and settled into his pillow. “Everything is just fine.”

* * *

Sunday dawned clear and warm, and Kyrie shooed everyone out of the house to burn off some energy. “Take them on a long walk, or to the park, or _anything_ ,” she told Nero. “I have work to do, and maybe some exercise will put an end to all this posturing.”

“Rosso and Zaffiro too?”

“We can’t keep them indoors forever,” she sighed. “Besides, do you really want them finding their own entertainment around here?”

Nero didn’t need to answer _that_ question. He marched the children to the park, bracketed by the twins, whose hands remained locked in his own—the condition under which he’d told them they were allowed out of the house. When they reached the green expanse, the older boys pelted toward the football pitch, while Flavia and Kyle ran to the area with the lushest grass, where they could cartwheel and somersault with the most comfortable landing.

Nero knelt to Rosso and Zaffiro’s eye level. “Okay, here are the rules for the park: You can play on the grass or on the playground—” He pointed toward the sandy patch where a shabby swingset, slide and jungle gym stood. “—but you may not leave those areas. If there are other kids playing, you have to take turns on the equipment. If you don’t know if something is allowed, you come ask me first. And when I whistle, you come running. Understand?” His eyes fixed on Zaffiro, whose mind he could already see analyzing these new rules for some weakness. _This kid would make a hell of a lawyer_ , he thought.

The boys agreed to the rules and wandered toward the playground, taking in everything around them with wide eyes. Nero found a bench where he could keep watch on them, but soon the twins were chasing each other over and through the jungle gym with impressive agility, and he began to relax. Maybe they _could_ just act like normal kids for a while.

After some minutes, a woman newly arrived at the park sent her own child off to the swings and settled at the other end of Nero’s bench. Her gaze flicked from the twins to Nero a few times. “Are those your little boys?” she asked.

“Guilty as charged.” It was really impossible to deny the family resemblance, with their white hair gleaming in the sunlight, and Nero didn’t feel obligated to provide the whole distant-relative cover story to a complete stranger.

“They’re adorable. You must be very proud of them.”

Nero wasn’t sure what this woman thought he should be particularly proud of—weren’t all kids equally adorable at that age?—but he shrugged. “Yeah, I think I’ll keep ‘em. Besides, I lost the receipt, so it’s not like I can return ‘em.”

She gave him a strange look, clearly failing to appreciate his humor. Well, it was a dumb conversation anyway. Maybe this would keep her from carrying on talking to him. Nero turned away to watch Julio practice his dribbling on the football field.

The woman didn’t take the hint. “You should be careful, though,” she said a moment later, leaning in as though imparting a secret. “Some of those other children out there are… _you know_.” She arched her eyebrows. Nero didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, and it must have showed on his face, because she leaned even closer. “From the _orphanage_. You don’t want your little ones falling in with those troublemakers.”

Nero stared back. “Troublemakers?”

The woman nodded. “One of those orphans—the red-haired boy over there—actually attacked my son at his school! They’re dreadfully ill-behaved, the lot of them. No self-control at all. I don’t blame _them_ , of course; it’s not as though anyone has ever shown them proper discipline. A sad waste, really.”

Oh, so _that_ _’s_ who this snooty bitch was. No wonder Kyrie had been upset by her. “Discipline,” Nero repeated. “Right. That’s your kid, isn’t it?” He pointed to a boy engaged in a shoving match with another child near the slide. When she nodded, he said, “Can you call him over here? I’d like to meet him.”

The woman preened a little at his interest. “Of course, I’d be glad to. Marco!” The boy glanced over at the sound of his mother’s voice, then resumed pushing the other kid around. The woman raised her voice. “Marco! Come here, _now!_ ” This time Marco completely ignored her. Her face gradually turned pink, but she laughed it off. “Well, he’ll be over in a minute. You know how distracted children can be when they’re playing.”

“Yeah, I do.” Nero stood. “You wanna see real _discipline_ , lady?” He took a few steps into the grass, put his fingers to his mouth, and gave a shrill whistle. Instantly all seven of his children whirled and launched toward him at a run—even the twins, he noted with relief. Rosso and Zaffiro, unsure of the protocol, watched the others skid into a neat line in front of Nero before taking their places at the end.

“Eight seconds,” Nero announced, grinning. “I think that’s a new record. Super special Sunday snack time is _on!_ ” The kids all cheered and raised their hands, and Nero jogged down the line, high-fiving them. The twins watched this ritual with curiosity and tentatively lifted their own hands, and Nero gave them an encouraging grin as he slapped their palms. “Good job, guys. You did really well. You can go back and play now.”

The children dispersed, clearly pleased with their own performance and the praise they’d received, and Nero dropped onto the bench again. “Before you go throwing shit at _my orphans_ , lady, maybe you should try reining in your little pet bully. Because I know how that fight started, and dear, sweet Marco deserved every punch in the nose he got.”

The woman jumped up with a huff and stalked toward the playground. “Marco! We’re leaving!” she snapped. Nero enjoyed his slightly-below-the-belt victory as Marco launched into a full-blown tantrum and his mother struggled to intimidate, then coax him to accompany her. She failed, of course, and Marco soon took up a defensive position on top of the jungle gym, too high for her to reach without climbing up after him. After a few minutes of shouting and pleading, Mama Marco slumped onto a bench and put her head in her hands. Nero almost felt sorry for her. _Almost_.

He quickly tired of watching Marco play king of the mountain, and noticed that Rosso and Zaffiro had followed Flavia and Kyle to Cartwheel Central and were now performing very respectable somersaults in the grass. Rosso even managed something approximating a handstand before collapsing into a forward roll and a fit of giggles. Nero tipped his head back, enjoying the moment of peace and the sun warming his face. He’d slept pretty well last night, but it had been a long week. Would it be too indulgent to take a short nap here? He doubted anyone would notice if he just closed his eyes for a minute or two…

A high-pitched shriek snapped him back awake, and Nero bolted to his feet before he had even located the source of the sound. The scream had come from Flavia, whose copper-colored hair was clenched in the fist of none other than Marco. An ugly sneer contorted the boy’s face, and Nero could just hear the sing-song _ginger, ginger_ as he pulled on her braid.

Nero started running, distantly registering that Scipio and Mama Marco were already incoming along their own trajectories. Before any of them could reach the knot of children, the wrath of hell descended on the bully.

Even at this distance, Nero’s skin prickled at the shift in power as Rosso and Zaffiro charged in unison, launching themselves into the air and slamming into Marco’s chest with enough force to take him to the ground. Unfortunately for Flavia, her hair was still tangled in Marco’s grip; she went down with him, crying out at the sudden sharp pressure on her scalp. Rosso laid into Marco’s face with inexpert fists, while Zaffiro pinned Marco’s wrist with one hand and pried his fingers loose from Flavia’s hair with the other. Marco started screaming and didn’t stop.

The bright sunlight _nearly_ concealed the flare of red and blue sparks.

“Stop, stop, _stop!_ ” Nero landed in the grass beside them, skidding the last few paces on his knees. “Stop, _now_. Everyone let go.” The twins obeyed immediately, the wave of enraged devil power subsiding now that Nero was there to take over. Flavia scrabbled away and clung to her brother, sobbing. Marco continued making noises like a cat with its tail caught in a door.

“Get away, you horrid brats!” Mama Marco shoved Nero away from her son. “Marco, honey—oh, just _look_ what they’ve done to my baby!”

Nero looked. Marco’s face was red and swollen, with darker weals that might have been lightning burns. His wrist bore the purpling imprint of tiny fingertips, and at least one of his fingers was bent at an awkward angle. Zaffiro had freed Flavia’s braid by brute force, it seemed. Nero had experienced the twins’ grip strength for himself; it was a wonder Marco hadn’t gotten a broken wrist in the bargain.

A crowd of onlookers had gathered to watch the spectacle, and Nero grimaced. Just what they needed—more controversy surrounding the orphanage, and Rosso and Zaffiro drawing this kind of attention to themselves. If anyone in the Order’s inner circle _had_ survived, the presence of two white-haired, super-powered children would definitely be the flare that drew them out of hiding.

“They should be arrested!” Mama Marco was babbling as she cradled her bawling son to her chest. “Those children are a menace! You!” She jabbed a finger at Nero. “You should be in jail, you and your whole horde of ruffians!”

“I don’t know, lady,” said a man who had been reading a newspaper on a nearby bench. “Seems to me your boy brought that on himself. Oughta be ashamed, picking on a little girl like that.”

“He’s twice the size they are,” laughed another bystander, “and he still got his ass handed to him!”

The knot of fear and fury in Nero’s stomach gradually loosened as he realized public opinion was, for once, on his side. Mama Marco hustled her son to his feet, flinging promises of prosecution and lawsuit at Nero as they staggered away, but no one seemed to put much stock in her threats. “Are the kids all okay?” asked the man with the paper. “Your little girl went down pretty hard.”

Nero beckoned to Flavia and checked her over. Apart from a skinned elbow, a tender scalp, and some grass stains, she seemed unharmed. Rosso and Zaffiro didn’t even have bruised knuckles. “Well, this sure was exciting,” Nero sighed. “I think it’s time to head home, don’t you?”

* * *

Nero sat on the lower bunk bed and glanced from one boy to the other. Rosso and Zaffiro stared back at him from the opposite bunk, their gazes frank and expectant. “So,” Nero began, feeling the least qualified person in the universe to be giving this lecture, “fighting… isn’t a good thing.”

Zaffiro stiffened. “He hurt Flavia.”

Rosso nodded. “We’re supposed to do something when we see someone who needs help.”

“Yes,” Nero admitted, “helping people is a good thing. But _hurting_ people isn’t good. You broke that kid’s fingers.”

Zaffiro’s chin notched higher. “He wouldn’t let go.”

Nero glanced toward the doorway for help. Kyrie was leaning against the doorjamb; she’d joined them after medicating Flavia’s scrapes and convincing the little girl to rest for a while. She stepped into the room in answer to Nero’s silent plea for assistance. “Boys,” she said gently, kneeling on the floor beside the bed, “have you ever heard of the ‘least harm’ principle?”

The twins shook their matching heads. The motion loosened Zaffiro’s hair, and he swept it back from his face in a familiar gesture.

“The idea is that in order to be good helpers, we have to choose actions that result in the least amount of harm. In this case, Flavia was being harmed, so stopping that boy from hurting her was a good thing. Understand?” The twins nodded. “But you did more than just prevent him from hurting her. When you knocked him down and hit him, you started hurting _him_ even more than he had hurt her. And that means _you_ were causing harm.”

Rosso frowned as he considered this. “But he was bad. Bad things should be stopped, or they’ll just hurt more people.”

“People aren’t all good or all bad. Sometimes people do bad things, but that doesn’t mean we should hurt them.” She laid a hand on each boy’s arm. “I’m very happy that you wanted to help Flavia, but it’s not right to hurt other people, even if you don’t like them. If something like that happens again, the best thing you can do is to let one of us know. Then we’ll stop it without causing any more harm. Understand?” The twins nodded reluctantly, and Kyrie stood. “All right. You’ve had a very busy morning, so I want you both to lie down and rest for a little while.”

Nero helped her tuck the boys in for a nap, then followed her out of the room, shutting the door behind them. Kyrie sighed and leaned back against the wall. “I was afraid of something like this happening.”

“I think they really were only trying to help. She screamed, and they just reacted.” Nero stared at the closed door. “I’m not sure they even realize they’re stronger than the others.”

“I know. But we’ve got to start thinking about that, and teaching them to control themselves.” She glanced at Nero. “Any ideas how to do that?”

“I’m not sure I’m the best one to ask. You’ve already got me feeling like a hypocrite. After all, I kill the ‘bad things’ for a living, no questions asked.”

She frowned. “Nero, that’s not the same thing at all. Demons and humans are completely different scenarios.”

“Are they?” Nero stared at the door again, envisioning the boys sleeping on the other side, each one concealing a devil beneath his human exterior. “Vergil was doing a helluva lot of harm, and Dante was ready to put him down to protect the world.”

“Until you stopped him.” Kyrie fixed her warm gaze on him. “Do you regret sparing him? Do you truly believe there was nothing in your father worth saving?”

“I don’t know.” Nero ran a hand through his hair, unconsciously mimicking the gesture Zaffiro had made a few minutes before. “He’s done some terrible things, but I guess he also has the capacity to do a lot of good, if he follows Dante’s example.”

“And yours,” Kyrie reminded him. “You and Dante both save people. You both protect humanity. Sparing Vergil and influencing him to do the same may yet prove to be the path of least harm.”

“Maybe.” Nero sighed. “This is way too much philosophy for my brain to handle. Where are the rest of the kids?”

“Having super special Sunday snack time in the kitchen.” Kyrie hooked her arm through Nero’s elbow. “Come on, Socrates, you still have a few meals to make up for.”


	24. Chapter 24

The children were sent to school the next morning with strict instructions not to discuss the incident at the park. Not long after they’d departed, Kyrie decided to follow them. “I’d like to have a talk with Scipio’s teacher,” she told Nero. “That boy Marco has targeted both Scipio and Flavia now, and I want to make sure the faculty are aware of the situation in case he decides to retaliate.”

Nero nodded. “Make sure they know Scipio wasn’t even involved in yesterday’s fight. We don’t want them thinking he’s the instigator.”

“I’ll make that clear. Will you be all right managing the boys on your own?”

He spread his hands. “Who knows? I’m as prepared as I can be, but those two have a way of finding new kinds of chaos to throw at us.”

“Troublemaking must run in the family.” Kyrie winked and gave him a quick kiss. “You have lunch duty.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Nero saluted. “Maybe I’ll let the boys help cook. That ought to keep them busy for at least ten minutes.”

She gave him a skeptical look. “Please don’t burn down our house in the process.”

“Aww, you take all the fun out of babysitting.” He grinned and shooed her toward the door. “Don’t worry. I got this.”

For all his confidence, however, Nero soon found that the twins were more difficult to entertain now that they’d had a taste of the great outdoors. Every time Nero suggested a quiet indoor activity, Rosso asked if they could go to the park, or go for a walk, or play outside. “Absolutely not,” Nero declared when Rosso wanted to explore the garage. “That violates the rule about dangerous activities. There’s a lot of stuff in the garage that could hurt you.”

“Like what?” Rosso asked, eyes shining, and Nero sighed. His usual child-management tactics were clearly not going to work here.

“Why don’t we go to school like the others?” Zaffiro interjected suddenly. He’d remained mostly silent through his brother’s insistent questions, deeply engrossed in one of Julio’s books—one that _should_ have been several reading levels beyond his skills, Nero thought, but these days both boys were absorbing knowledge faster than he could track, their minds developing as quickly as their bodies.

Zaffiro’s question was perfectly valid, and it was one Nero hadn’t even considered. Everything had happened so fast with the twins, he doubted if even Kyrie had thought of schooling for them. “You aren’t enrolled,” he said after floundering for a moment. “You came here so late in the year that you didn’t get signed up with the others.”

Zaffiro’s sharp blue eyes flicked to Rosso, then back to Nero. “Why _are_ we here?”

Nero wasn’t remotely prepared for that question. He wasn’t ready for a conversation about who they were, how they were connected to him, what had happened to them, why he had brought them here… He forced a laugh. “Congratulations, you’ve discovered the great existential question. People have been asking that since the beginning of time, and as far as I know, the correct answer is still anyone’s guess.”

The corners of Zaffiro’s mouth turned down at his response, and even Rosso’s effervescence dimmed. “We don’t belong here, do we?” the younger twin murmured.

“Of course you do,” Nero said quickly. All of their foster children had gone through this phase; _this_ , at least, he knew how to handle. “I know it’s hard to learn all the rules and things, but you’ll fit in just fine. And don’t _ever_ think we don’t want you here.”

Rosso shook his head. “But this isn’t our home.”

“It is now,” Nero insisted. “I promise, Kyrie and I will look after you just like we’re your own—” The last word stalled in his throat as he realized exactly what he was saying. How often had he recited this speech to some frightened child coming into their home? He’d meant every word, every time he’d said it, but the realization that these particular children really _were_ his own family was jarring.

Rosso and Zaffiro were frowning intently at him, but Nero was saved from answering by the ring of the telephone. He jumped up from the sofa and all but ran to the kitchen.

Nico’s drawl broke through the shoddy connection. “Hey, you wanna pick up some work? Just got a call about a bunch o’ demons on the east edge of town.”

Nero swore softly. “I’d be up for it, but I’m babysitting the twins today.”

“Bring ‘em along! It’s good socialization, right? They might as well get used to huntin’ demons, since that’s pretty much gonna be the rest of their lives.”

“Nico, they’re barely the size of five-year-olds right now! I’m not putting them in a combat situation. We don’t even have the van to lock them in.”

Nico gave a thoughtful hum. “What if _I_ watch them while you kill the demons? We could, like, hang out in a shop or somethin’, an’ you can come get us when you’re done.”

Nero drummed his fingers on the wall. “Why don’t you just come here and stay with them, and I’ll go do the job?”

“Uh, because I’m the one who negotiated our fee, and I’m the one who has to collect it. C’mon, it’ll be fine!”

“Kyrie’s gonna kill me,” he muttered, “but we really could use the money… Okay, where should I meet you?”

She gave him an address, which he jotted down on the pad Kyrie kept beside the phone before hanging up. He tore off that sheet and left another note for Kyrie explaining where they’d gone, then hurried back to the boys. “Hey, kids, guess you get to go out today after all! Get your shoes on. We’re going to take a walk and meet Nico.”

Both boys jumped to their feet, but Rosso cocked his head. “Who’s Nico?”

“She’s a friend. You’ll like her; all the kids do. Now hurry up! Shoes on. Let’s go.”

* * *

Nero felt more than a little conspicuous carrying Red Queen’s case down the street, but he thought he would stand out more wearing the sword openly on his back. There had been a time when Holy Knights of the Order of the Sword were a common sight all over the city, but enough years had passed since then that large weapons were liable to make at least some of the town’s residents nervous. Plus, he didn’t relish trying to explain to the twins why he was toting a huge sword around.

The sword case occupied one of his hands, so Nero kept his other firmly on Zaffiro, watching to make sure the boy’s other hand stayed linked with Rosso’s as they navigated to the eastern end of the city. The address Nico had given him was a good twenty minutes’ walk at his own pace, and slowed by two shorter-legged children, it was a full half hour before Nero reached the corner where Nico was pacing impatiently.

“’Bout time you showed up!” she scowled. “Hope that other hunter hasn’t sniped us by now.”

Nero glared at her and indicated the twins with a jerk of his head. “Rosso, Zaffiro, this is Nico.”

Nico stopped pacing and grinned sheepishly at the boys, clearly only just realizing why Nero had been late. “Oh, right. Hiya, kids.” She extended her hand for a shake, and the twins stared at it before slapping her palm in a timid approximation of Nero’s high-five the day before. Nico laughed. “Okay, that’s how we’re gonna roll? Fine by me. You kids ready to hang out with Cool Auntie Nico for a little while?”

Both boys twisted to stare up at Nero, looking suddenly anxious at this turn of events. “I’ve got a little work to take care of,” Nero explained. “Nico’s gonna take you on an adventure, and then we’ll all meet up afterward, okay?”

“What kind of adventure?” Rosso asked.

“Well, I thought we might wander around, look at the shops…” She glanced helplessly at Nero, and he sighed. Apparently she hadn’t thought this through _at all_. Suddenly she brightened. “Hey, you boys like scavenger hunts, don’t you?”

Zaffiro cocked his head. “Scavenger hunts?”

“Yeah! It’s like a game where you look for stuff. We’ll make a list of things, an’ then see how many of them we can find. It’ll be fun.” Nico took the twins’ hands and nodded at Nero. “You better get goin’ before that other hunter shows up. It’s the building at the end of the block. The old hotel.”

“Right. I’ll meet you back here when I’m done. You kids be good for Nico, okay? Stay with her.” Nero looked hard at Zaffiro. “All the home rules still apply.”

He took off at a run for the building Nico had indicated, the reassuring weight of Blue Rose pressing against the small of his back. The former hotel’s door stood open, and Nero stepped inside to let his eyes adjust before unlocking Red Queen’s case. The hotel’s once-elegant lobby was in disrepair, with the space carved up into what looked like dilapidated market stalls. From somewhere deeper in the building, Nero could hear the faint chittering and scraping of low-level demons. He started for the stairs, but halfway across the lobby, he jerked to a halt, staring at the floor.

Scraped out in rough paint on the polished marble was a Solomon’s Noose.

Suddenly, from somewhere above him, the explosion of a pistol shattered the stillness of the building—three shots in quick succession. Nero bolted across the summoning circle and up the stairs, already drawing Blue Rose as he reached the floor above the lobby. The stairwell opened into a ballroom space, where the air was choked with ash from dying demons. Another shot rang out, and a Scarecrow near Nero toppled over backward before struggling to right itself.

Nero didn’t give it the chance. A single stroke from Red Queen bisected the demon, and it curled into ash as he stepped over it into the middle of the room. “It’s not polite to start the party before the invited guests arrive,” he called into the room, both announcing himself and challenging the other hunter. “But it seems you’re not the polite type, the way you keep stealing my gigs.”

Another shot cracked through the room, and a cloud of plaster exploded from a pillar at Nero’s left shoulder. Nero brought Blue Rose up and scanned the room. “Now _that_ was just plain rude. Get out here and apologize.” A Scarecrow charged from Nero’s left, and he just had time to squeeze Red Queen’s throttle for a little extra flash before slicing the demon into neat quarters. The burlap body burst into dust. “I’m waiting!” Nero held his arms wide, a weapon in each hand. “You gonna shoot at me _and_ make me do all the work? C’mon, that’s just embarrassing. Have a little professional pride!”

His taunts were sidelined by another pair of Scarecrows, which he downed with well-placed dual shots from Blue Rose. From across the room he heard the echo of another single shot—something loud, not quite as punchy as Blue Rose’s high-load ammunition, but probably the same caliber—and another Scarecrow staggered. He oriented toward the sound and dashed forward with his full devil-augmented speed, trailing Red Queen and slicing through the couple of demons he passed on his path. In the far corner of the room, a human figure was silhouetted against the light of the window, and Nero swung his sword overhead and brought it down toward center mass—not hard, not unstoppable, but _fast_. He had a point to make.

There was a shriek of surprise, and Nero hauled back against the sword’s momentum just as it struck something metallic. The other hunter had instinctively flung both arms up in defense, and Red Queen’s blade crashed into the barrel of a revolver clutched in one of the upraised hands. Nero eased his grip and let the weight of the massive sword rest fully on the gun, pressing it down.

The other hunter’s arms dropped under the weight, and Nero caught a glimpse of curling red-gold hair before his sword was thrust suddenly to the side. His opponent used the instant’s distraction to bolt for the door, but Nero was faster. He dashed ahead, swung out an arm in a loose haymaker, and executed a neat clothesline maneuver with the inside of his elbow. The hunter’s shoulders slammed into the floor with bone-jarring force.

Nero dropped a knee into his opponent’s solar plexus as he reloaded Blue Rose and finished off the last few Scarecrows. Only when the room was cleared of demons did he relax and glance down at the stranger, already composing a sarcastic jibe about the ease with which he had won the fight.

The words died on his lips as he took in the body below him, and he quickly levered himself up. “Shit. Are you okay?”

The girl he’d been kneeling on rolled to one side and began coughing. The first few breaths wheezed in her lungs. Nero had flattened her with more than necessary force—but then, he’d been expecting another devil hunter, not a petite, stick-thin teenage girl. When she’d recovered her breath, she raked limp auburn hair back from her face and shot him a baleful glare, but said nothing.

Nero slung Red Queen onto his back and crossed his arms. “You gonna tell me who you are, and what the hell you’re doing here?”

The girl remained silent, considering his stance. Nero spotted her tensing muscles an instant before she rolled onto her back, bringing the revolver up to aim at his face. “Get back,” she hissed. A trace of accent curled around her words.

Nero rolled his eyes. “Or what?” He dropped into a crouch and tapped the warm muzzle with a finger. “You already fired six shots, genius. You’ve got loose rounds falling out of your pockets, but you haven’t had time to reload since I got here. Now, I suppose you _could_ have a speedloader tucked away somewhere, but after listening to all the women I know gripe about how tiny the pockets in women’s clothing are, I’m willing to bet you don’t. So you can either get that empty gun out of my face, or you can prove me wrong.” He cocked his head at her, expectant. “Go on. Pull the trigger.”

The girl’s mouth curled into a scowl, and she swung the pistol at Nero’s face. He caught it a hand’s breath from his cheekbone and wrenched it out of her hand, drawing a hiss of pain as her finger caught in the trigger guard. Nero examined the revolver and let out a low whistle. “Well, now. I was gonna play nice, but now that I see this—” He flipped the gun around and tapped the engraving on the barrel. “—I’m inclined to drag you downstairs and just hand you over to Nico. Because busting up our van and costing us an assload of money in repairs is _nothing_ compared to stealing Nico’s only memento of her grandmother. She’s gonna tear you a new one, assuming she doesn’t just shoot you outright. Get up.” He seized her arm and hauled her to her feet.

The girl struggled all the way to the stairs, but Nero kept a tight grip on her upper arm. She became docile as they descended to the ground floor, shoulders slumping in defeat. When they were halfway across the lobby she stumbled, and Nero let his hand drop with her to avoid dislocating her shoulder. His captive caught herself with her palms flat on the floor, hissing something too low to hear. Nero knelt beside her. “C’mon, Red, back on your feet. I don’t want to drag…”

His words were cut off by a flare of light and an unsettling shift in the air around him. He stumbled back, realizing too late that she’d thrown herself directly on top of the summoning circle painted on the floor. The Solomon’s Noose activated, a portal bubbling into existence above it, and a second later a bladed appendage pierced through the veil between worlds. Nero swore and reached for Red Queen.

It took less than a minute for him to dispatch the handful of demons who surged through the portal, but by the time Nero had struck the last one into ash, the mysterious girl had vanished completely.

* * *

Nero felt as though he had paced a trench into the pavement by the time Nico and the twins returned. “Leave the kids with me and go collect from the client,” he called without even pausing to greet them. “That other hunter was here, and I don’t want her claiming our pay.”

“Her?” Nico blinked behind her glasses, then shook her head. “Uh, okay. I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere!” She bolted across the street.

The twins stared after her, then made their way to Nero. He crouched in front of them. “Sorry about that. Just had a little excitement while you were gone. Did you have a good time with Nico?”

Rosso nodded. “We found a lot of things on the list! I like scavenger hunting.”

“I saw a store I want to go into,” Zaffiro added. “Nico said we had to ask you first because it’s an expensive shop.”

Nero suppressed a grimace. “Well, I suppose we can walk by and look at it, but I don’t have a lot of money right now.”

Rosso glanced in the direction Nico had run. “You will when Nico gets back, though. Right?”

The twins’ powers of observation were impressive, if occasionally irritating. “That money is to pay for things like this week’s groceries,” Nero explained. “It’s for everyone to share, so it wouldn’t be fair to spend it on something only you wanted.”

Both boys nodded, but Zaffiro turned hopeful eyes on Nero. “Looking doesn’t cost money, though, does it?”

Nero sighed. Well, he _had_ wanted to keep the kids busy today. “Okay, you can show me where this shop is after Nico gets back.”

Nico returned a few minutes later, grinning and carrying an envelope. She divided the cash into two stacks and handed one to Nero. “Not our biggest payday ever, but it sure feels good to have a little bread in the hand, y’know?”

“I found something that’ll make you even happier,” Nero told her, but then caught sight of the twins’ attentive gazes and hesitated. Probably best not to flash guns around in front of them. “Hey, Zaffiro, why don’t you lead us to that shop you wanted to see?”

“Lead?” Zaffiro blinked. “I don’t have to hold your hand?”

 _Damn_. He didn’t dare slack off on the rules, or he’d never get Zaffiro in line again. “This is a test to see if you’re ready to walk on your own, okay? Hold hands with Rosso, and don’t run ahead. We’ll be right behind you, watching how well you do.”

The boys linked hands and headed off at a brisk pace, which corresponded to an easy walk for Nero and Nico. Nero waited until the twins were distracted by their surroundings before pulling the pistol out from under his coat. “Here.”

Nico’s eyes widened, then actually teared up as she took the .45 in both hands. “Nell’s gun! How…?”

“Compliments of that rival hunter. It probably needs cleaning; she was using it to kill demons.”

“Well, that’s probably what it was made for.” Nico traced the engraving reverently. “Thanks, Nero.” She turned the revolver over in her hands and stopped short. “Hey!” she snapped.

Ahead, the twins turned back at the exclamation, and Nero quickly stepped between them and Nico to hide the gun. “Not you. You’re doing great. Keep going.” He waited until the boys resumed walking before dragging Nico forward. “What?” he hissed.

Nico held out the gun and pointed at a silver gouge in the metal. “Did _you_ do this?” she demanded. “That looks like the kinda mark Red Queen would make.”

Nero sighed. This wouldn’t end well. “Yeah, she used it to block me.”

“Do you know what you did?” Nico slugged Nero hard in the shoulder. “You damaged a Nell Goldstein original!”

“Ow!” Nero rubbed his arm and shot her a murderous glare. “Would you knock it off? She was shooting at me, and I didn’t know it was your gun until afterward! It’s only a scratch, anyway. Just buff it out.”

“But that’ll ruin the patina!”

Nero rolled his eyes. “Nico, you can fix anything. You’ll find a way.”

Nico tucked the gun away and continued sulking for a few more strides, but eventually her curiosity got the better of her. “So, that new hunter is a woman?”

“Barely that. Girl’s maybe sixteen, seventeen at most. And I’d lay odds she’s the one behind those summoning circles, too. I saw her activate a Solomon’s Noose.”

“A devil hunter summoning devils?” Nico scowled. “That don’t make any sense at all. Where is she now?”

“She got away while I was fighting the pack of demons she summoned.”

“Huh.” Nico stuck a cigarette between her lips and was halfway to lighting it when Nero caught her wrist. “Oops, right, sorry. Forgot about the kids.” She frowned thoughtfully. “Though, do they really count? Because Dante and Vergil are at least forty—”

“ _Nico_.”

“Fine, fine.” She put away the cigarette and pointed ahead. “Hey, there’s the shop he wanted to see. I don’t know why he was even interested in it, but I figured it was out of your price range.”

Rosso and Zaffiro had stopped walking and were waiting patiently in front of a large window display. Nero caught up with them in a few strides. “Hey, you guys walked really well.”

Zaffiro looked pleased. “Does that mean we can go in?”

Nero peered at the display. The window was crammed full of antiques: A spinning wheel sat beside an old rocking chair and a stained-glass lamp, while the carved wooden table beside it supported a cast-iron bulldog, a flaking violin case, and an assortment of antique kitchen implements. Nothing on display seemed like it would be of the least interest to a boy of four or five. “This is an antique shop, kiddo. Are you sure this is the place you wanted to see?”

Zaffiro nodded enthusiastically, and Nero hesitated. He knew they had no business here, but the boys _had_ been well-behaved today, and Zaffiro seemed to have his heart set on it. “Okay, we can go in if you really want to, but don’t touch _anything_ without permission.”

“I’ll wait out here.” Nico was already fishing in her pocket for the discarded cigarette.

Nero rolled his eyes and opened the door. A bell tinkled somewhere overhead, and he ushered the twins into the darker interior of the shop. Inside, the narrow space was packed full of heavy furniture, faded books, and an assortment of knick-knacks that looked like they hadn’t been dusted since the previous century.

A bespectacled man in an ill-fitting waistcoat ducked out of a curtained back area and beamed at his customers. “Good afternoon! Welcome, welcome. Is there something in particular you’re looking for?”

While trying to frame a response that would make it clear they weren’t here to buy anything while not being overtly rude, Nero glanced toward Zaffiro. The boy evidently took the look to mean the question was his to answer, and stepped forward. “May I see the violin in the window, please?” he asked, eyes large and hopeful.

The shopkeeper seemed surprised by the request coming from such a young child, but went to fetch the instrument. “It’s quite old,” he said as he wiped a layer of dust from the case. “And probably out of tune. I love to listen, but I don’t play, myself. But it is in fine condition.” He opened the case and held it low so Zaffiro could see it.

Zaffiro tore his eyes away from the polished honey-colored instrument long enough to cast a pleading look on Nero, who took a few seconds to realize he was asking for permission to touch it. “Go ahead,” Nero said, squelching the inner voice that told him this was a terrible idea and he should get his miniature bulls out of the china shop as quickly as possible. “Just… be very careful with it.”

Zaffiro reverently wrapped his left hand around the neck of the instrument and positioned it against his shoulder. The violin was clearly too big for him, requiring him to extend his arm nearly straight to hold it, but he craned his chin atop the rest and plucked a string. He made a face at the sour tone and adjusted the peg, then repeated the process across all four strings until he seemed satisfied with the pitch of each one.

The shopkeeper beamed at Nero. “I’ve never seen anyone tune purely by ear before. Your boy must have quite the ear for music!”

Nero was staring at Zaffiro in growing wonder. “Yeah, I guess he does.”

“Do both your sons play?”

Nero was so distracted by Zaffiro’s obvious skill that it took him a moment to catch the man’s meaning. “Oh! Uh…” He glanced at Rosso.

“Not violin,” Rosso volunteered. “Do you have any guitars?”

“I’m afraid not. Just the violin, and a few brass instruments, in the back. When the opera company disbanded a few years ago, several members of the orchestra sold me their spares.” The shopkeeper watched Zaffiro pluck another string, then brightened suddenly. “Oh! Wait here just a moment.” He set the case on the counter and hurried into the back area, then reappeared with a bow in hand. A few strands of horsehair flew loose from the end, but it seemed serviceable. “Hopefully this one isn’t too long for you. Here, try it out if you like.” He presented the bow to Zaffiro.

With a look of great concentration, Zaffiro positioned his fingers and drew the bow across the strings. It was a little squeaky, but the tone was good, and the boy played through a very respectable practice scale.

Where he’d picked up that skill, Nero couldn’t imagine. Kyrie was always singing around the house, and Nero had an acoustic guitar hidden away in his closet—he’d sold his electric after losing his arm, a hasty decision he still regretted—but violin scales weren’t something one learned from a book, or even from watching or listening another player. Zaffiro knew _exactly_ what he was doing. But how?

“Wonderful! Simply wonderful!” The shopkeeper clapped his hands when Zaffiro had finished. “Young man, I am very impressed. You must practice a lot at home.”

“No,” the boy replied. He stroked a hand over the luminous wood. “I don’t have a violin.”

The shopkeeper’s eyes slid to Nero, who found himself trapped between two equally hopeful gazes. Knowing he’d regret it, Nero flipped over the price tag dangling from the end of the case. The number nearly stopped his heart; it was as much money as he’d made in the past _month_. “Um,” Nero managed.

His shock must have shown on his face, because Zaffiro’s shoulders sagged a little, and he dutifully handed the violin and bow back to the shopkeeper. “Thank you for letting me play it.”

The shopkeeper glanced between them. “It _is_ a very reasonable price, for an instrument of such quality,” he tried.

Zaffiro shook his head. “We only have enough money to buy this week’s groceries,” he said artlessly. “We can’t spend it on something that’s just for me.”

The boy sounded so resigned that Nero found himself wanting to apologize for his inability to make the extravagant purchase. The shopkeeper must have felt it, too, because his face flooded with sympathy. “Look, I… I’m not an expert, but I’ve heard that it’s not good for instruments to sit too long without being used. So… if you wanted to stop by every once in a while, I’d appreciate it if you could test this violin for me. You know, just to check that it’s in tune. Maybe play it for a few minutes to keep it in good shape.”

Zaffiro’s eyes glowed, and he whirled to Nero. “Can I?”

It was impossible to crush such hope. “Sure, as long as Kyrie or I come with you. Thank you,” he added to the shopkeeper.

The man dismissed Nero’s thanks with a wave of his hand. “Don’t mention it. I can’t sell a violin that’s out of tune, after all.” He winked over the boy’s head.

They found Nico waiting outside the shop, reeking of cigarette smoke. “Took ya long enough,” she chided. “What was so excitin’ in there?”

“Turns out Zaffiro is a musical prodigy.” Nero ruffled the boy’s hair, which Zaffiro smoothed back into place with a scowl. “He plays violin.”

Nico stared at him. “That’s… very interestin’. Did you know that… uh, that there were any violinists… in the family?”

“Nope. Had no idea. Still not entirely sure where it came from.” Nero glanced down at Zaffiro. “Where did you learn to play, Zaffiro?”

“I dreamed about it.” The boy kicked at a pebble and chased it across the sidewalk to kick it again. Apparently that was all he had to say on the subject.

“Maybe next time, we can find a shop that has a guitar,” Rosso suggested. “I want to try playing one.”

Nico caught Nero’s eye. “Your _uncle_ plays guitar, right, Nero?”

“Yeah. At least, he’s got one in his shop. Along with…” He looked thoughtfully at the younger twin. “Rosso, how about drums? You have any interest in those?”

Rosso considered it, then shook his head. “I don’t know much about drums. But I think I could play guitar if I tried.”

“Huh.” Whatever was going on with their memories, clearly not _all_ of their musical knowledge had carried over; he was certain Dante’s drum set had seen a fair amount of use. “Well, as it happens, I have a guitar back at the house. Maybe sometime you can try playing mine.”

“Cool!” Rosso grinned and chased after his brother to steal the pebble he was kicking. The boys jostled along the sidewalk, trading off pebble-kicks like football passes.

Eventually the little stone rolled into the street, and only Nero’s sharp “ _Hey!_ ” stopped the boys from dashing after it. “What’s the rule about staying on the sidewalk?” Nero held out a hand to either side. “You’ve just lost walking-alone privileges for the way home.”


	25. Chapter 25

On Wednesday, Lady arrived, her motorcycle loaded with so many suspicious parcels that Nero knew she’d come bearing enough firepower to blast the Nilepoch into the next century even _without_ its time-stealing power. “You’d better park that thing in the garage,” he told her when he met her at the street. “I don’t want this whole neighborhood blown up if somebody decides to get light-fingered with your luggage.”

“I was going to suggest that, myself.” Lady dismounted the bike and stretched. “You got those new locks installed, right?”

“Yeah. And there’s plenty of space, now that the van is out of the picture.”

Lady slid her sunglasses down her nose to peer at him over their rims. “Run that by me again?”

Briefly Nero filled her in on the damage to their vehicle and his encounter with the teenage girl at the hotel. “So that’s one mystery solved, but about a dozen more dumped on the table.”

“Starting with why a hunter would be summoning demons.” Lady shook her head. “Why don’t you open the garage, and we can continue this discussion after I’ve parked the bike.”

When they entered the house several minutes later, Rosso and Zaffiro were lounging on the sofa in the living room—Zaffiro with a novel in his lap, and Rosso flopped on his stomach with a book of puzzles in front of him. Lady slowly removed her glasses, her eyes locked on the children. “Wow,” she murmured. “It really _is_ them.”

The boys looked up and fixed curious gazes on the new guest. Nero had grown accustomed to the twins’ appearance, but Lady’s comment made him notice how much they were starting to resemble their adult selves: Rosso’s hair was loose and a bit messy, while Zaffiro kept his pushed back from his face. Rosso’s easy, lopsided grin was less restrained than Zaffiro’s thoughtful smile. Though they remained inseparable, their personalities were as disparate as their faces were similar.

The twins waited expectantly for an introduction, and Nero beckoned them over. “This is Miss Lady. She’ll be staying with us for a while.” He pointed at each boy. “Zaffiro. Rosso. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble telling them apart.”

“No, I won’t.” Lady continued gazing at the children. “You two have gotten a _lot_ bigger since the last time I was here.”

Nero nodded. “They outgrew the crib, so we had to get another set of bunks. Which reminds me…” He picked up the saddlebags Lady had carried in. “Unless you really want to be on the couch again, I thought you could stay in Flavia’s room. She’s got the only spare bed.”

Lady laughed. “As long as Little Miss actually lets me sleep, and doesn’t keep demanding more gymnastics tricks all night.”

“She’s only four. Trust me, she sleeps more than anybody in the house.” Nero grinned at her. “You know, you _can_ tell her no, if she pesters you too much.”

“I don’t have the heart to. She gets so excited about every little thing.” Lady followed Nero into the tiny bedroom and sat on the bed to remove her tall boots. “This is cozy.”

“Just don’t bang your head on the ceiling.” Nero tapped the sloping plaster overhead. “I’ve clocked myself more than once, getting out of bed.”

“You sleep in here?” Lady raised an eyebrow. “Is this Kyrie’s version of the doghouse?”

“As if Kyrie could hold a grudge that long.” Nero rolled his eyes. “No, this used to be my bedroom, before Credo died.”

“Ah. I see.” The mockery vanished from Lady’s voice, as it always did whenever one of them mentioned a deceased family member. That was an understanding they all shared. “Where is Kyrie, anyway?”

“She called to say she was going to pick up some groceries on her way back from the orphanage.”

Lady nodded. “I guess we need to discuss our plan of action, then. Do you think—”

They were interrupted by the muted thump of a knock at the front door. Nero leaned out in the hall and listened, and the knock was repeated. It was too soon for Kyrie to be home, and he wasn’t expecting anyone else. “Just a minute; let me answer that.”

He opened the door to find a man in a suit, armed with a clipboard, standing outside. “Ah, good afternoon,” the man said. “You must be…” He ran his index finger over a paper attached to his clipboard. “Guardians, Kyrie—no, no. Ah, here it is. Nero—”

“Yes, I am,” Nero cut him off. “And I’m kinda busy, so maybe you can skip to the part where you tell me what you want?”

The besuited man stiffened. “My name is Dominic Alluno. I’m an officer of the school board. I’m afraid I need to talk to you about your children.”

Nero crossed his arms. “Look, if this is about Scipio, that kid Marco started it.”

Mr. Alluno adjusted his glasses. “No, I’m here about your twin boys.” He peered down at his sheet again. “Rosso and Zaffiro, I believe? Very unusual names, I must say.”

Nero shifted forward so his body was blocking more of the doorway. “And just where did you hear those names?”

“Why, from your foster children, of course. We asked them to verify the story.”

“Just what story would that be?”

Mr. Alluno frowned. “The mother of another student reported that her son was seriously injured by two boys in the park.”

Nero rolled his eyes. “Here we go.”

“She brought the complaint to us, as a matter of safety. Of course we checked our records to see if there were cause for disciplinary action, and imagine our dismay when we discovered that there _were_ no school records for twin boys at this address.” He pushed his glasses up again. “So I am here to learn why your sons are truant, Mr., ah…” He glanced at his sheet again.

“They’re not my sons.”

Mr. Alluno frowned. “Mrs. Moretti said you told her they were your children.”

“They’re mine the same way Julio, Carlo, Kyle, Scipio and Flavia are, but that doesn’t make them my _sons_.”

The truant officer leaned to one side, peering past Nero’s shoulder. “I must say, if they aren’t your children, there’s quite a coincidental resemblance.”

Nero glanced back to find Rosso and Zaffiro watching the confrontation with undisguised curiosity from the hallway behind him. He suppressed a sigh. “I never said they weren’t related to me. I’m taking care of them while my uncle recovers from an accident.”

Mr. Alluno made a note on his clipboard. “So the boys are your first cousins, then?”

“Does it matter what their relation to me is?”

“It might, if it comes to a ruling. May I come in and meet the children?”

Nero wanted nothing more than to launch this annoying bureaucrat across the street, but he knew that anything he did could blow back on Kyrie and the rest of the children. “Sure, I guess. Let’s go into the living room.” He shooed the twins ahead of him and pointed to the couch. They sat dutifully and stared at Mr. Alluno as he seated himself in the armchair.

“Right, then. Hello, children.” He waited for the boys to respond, but Rosso and Zaffiro merely returned his gaze. “Which of you boys is which?”

Nero leaned over the back of the sofa between the twins. “I take it you’re colorblind.”

Mr. Alluno blinked at him a few times. “No, I’m not. Why would you…” His eyes fell on the twins’ clothing. On her shopping trip, Lady had made sure to supply enough red and blue shirts to stick with the theme for years to come, and the boys had eagerly embraced their signature colors. “Oh. I see. Right. Well, let’s start with Rosso, then. Tell me, what grade are you in?”

Rosso glanced up at Nero, confused. “Grade?”

“Yes,” Mr. Alluno said. “When you lived at home, with your parents, did you attend school?”

Rosso gave a swift twist of his head. “I’ve never been to school.”

“I see.” Mr. Alluno made a note on his clipboard. “And you, Zaffiro, you haven’t attended school either?”

“No.” Zaffiro tapped his fingers impatiently on the cover of his book. “We aren’t enrolled.”

“That is a very serious offense.” Mr. Alluno shot Nero a severe look. “One that should have been rectified as soon as the boys arrived in your care.”

“They’ve only been here a few weeks,” Nero returned. “Besides, they already know more than your school would be teaching them at their age. They can read and write and play music and everything.”

Mr. Alluno frowned. “You mean they were home-schooled?”

Nero had no idea, but he knew the twins were learning faster than Kyrie’s simple alphabet lessons could account for. “If you don’t believe me, ask Zaffiro to read something to you. He’s holding a book.”

Mr. Alluno held out his hand for the book in Zaffiro’s lap and examined it. “I find it difficult to believe a child so young could already be reading at this level.” His gaze swung back to Zaffiro. “Who taught you to read?”

“Mother,” Zaffiro answered promptly.

Mr. Alluno opened to a random page, skimmed the first few lines, and handed the book back to Zaffiro. “Please read the first paragraph at the top left.”

Zaffiro held the book high and read aloud. “For three days Prince Paul hid there without food or water. The family of minstrels could not feed him without opening the trap door and disturbing the spider web, you see, and that was what protected him.”

Mr. Alluno considered him thoughtfully. “I suppose if the book had already been read to you, you might be able to guess what it said. Let’s try something else.” He glanced down at the stacks of leatherbound volumes beside his chair and picked up the top book. “Have you read any of these?”

Nero stiffened. “Hey, you can’t ask him to read those.”

“No?” Mr. Alluno flashed a predatory smile. “Afraid he won’t be able to do it?”

“Those books are not age-appropriate.”

“Odd, since they’re sitting here in plain sight where any of your children could pick them up.” He put the heavy book in Zaffiro’s lap. “Just open it and start reading anywhere, my boy.”

Zaffiro glanced up at Nero, who nodded tightly and hoped there weren’t any grotesque illustrations on the page he chose. The boy opened the heavy book with some effort—to Nero’s relief, there were no images—and glanced at the man who had handed it to him. “How much should I read?”

“Just a sentence or two will do.”

Zaffiro bent his head over the text. “ _Quin ipsae stupuere domus atque intima Leti tartara caeruleosque implexae crinibus angues Eumenides, tenuitque inhians tria Cerberus ora atque Ixionii vento rota constitit orbis._ ”

Mr. Alluno’s mouth hung slightly ajar. “That’s… that’s _Latin_.” He yanked the book away from Zaffiro and stared at it. “It’s _Latin_.”

“I heard you the first time,” Nero drawled, thanking his lucky stars that the book he’d selected hadn’t been one of the Order’s more horrific volumes. “Told you those books weren’t age-appropriate.”

The man produced a handkerchief and wiped his spectacles, attempting to regain his composure. “Well. Even if the content isn’t appropriate, it’s not as though he knows what it means.”

“I do so!” Scowling, Zaffiro pulled the heavy book back to his lap and found the passage again, keeping a finger on it as he worked through the words. “Indeed… the very halls… of the underworld… and the…” He chewed his lip. “ _Caeruleosque_ … Blue! Blue snakes…”

Nero put a hand on Zaffiro’s shoulder. “That’s enough, kiddo. I think Mr. Alluno has figured out by now that you’re probably more educated than some of the _teachers_ at his school.”

Mr. Alluno certainly seemed very flustered, and he became even more so when Lady appeared in the doorway. She’d shed the motorcycle chaps and jacket, and was dressed in a low-cut tank top over a pair of extremely snug microshorts. “Oh, hello there. Sorry, Nero, I didn’t realize you had company. I was going to start today’s gymnastics lesson with the boys, but I can wait if you’re busy.”

“Gym… gymnastics?” Mr. Alluno echoed, his cheeks tinged pink. “I’m sorry, but who are you?”

“Lady Kalina Bolingbroke.” She crossed the room and offered her hand. “I’m the boys’ tutor and personal trainer.” She laughed in an airy tone Nero had never heard her use before. “Well, I do teach some of the other children, too. Flavia is quite keen on gymnastics.”

“You’re… their tutor?” The truant officer eyed her skimpy outfit, and his eyes shifted suspiciously to Nero.

Lady nodded. “I come over every so often to visit and help out. Kyrie has made a valiant effort to keep up with their studies, but she has so many children to care for, and I didn’t want the boys to fall too far behind in Latin or their athletics. And I missed them.” She ruffled Rosso’s hair affectionately. “I’ve known Nero’s uncle for years. We’re practically family.”

“I see. And—just to be certain I understand—the lady of the house is fine with this, er, arrangement?” Mr. Alluno looked decidedly smug. “She wouldn’t be surprised to find you here…” His gesture encompassed Lady’s clothing. “Like _that?_ ”

Nero bristled at the insinuation that he would ever be unfaithful to Kyrie, but before he could respond, the front door opened. “Nero!” Kyrie’s voice echoed through the house. “Could you—Oh!” Kyrie stopped when she saw the crowd in her living room. Mr. Alluno shot a triumphant look at Nero, but it faltered when Kyrie exclaimed, “Lady! What a lovely surprise! I didn’t see your motorcycle out front.” She set down the bags she was carrying and hugged Lady before turning to Mr. Alluno. “I’m sorry; I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Kyrie.”

“This is Mr. Alluno from the school board,” Nero said before the man could introduce himself. “He was coming to check up on Zaffiro and Rosso, but we’ve explained that they’re being tutored at home. Zaffiro even gave him a demonstration of his reading skills. So everything is fine now, right?” Nero shot a pointed look at his guest.

“Er, yes.” Mr. Alluno stood and mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. “I suppose everything is in order, so I’ll… just… be going now.” He all but ran for the door, clutching his clipboard.

When it closed behind him, Nero and Lady burst out laughing, to Kyrie’s confusion. “Oh, the look on his face when Kyrie walked in,” Lady choked out. “I swear he was about to pull out a camera and take blackmail photos of us.”

“You should have seen his face when Zaffiro started translating the Latin.” Nero shook his head. “Kyrie, you just missed a wild, wild ride.”

“Evidently.” She bent to pick up the groceries she’d set down. “Do I even want to know what you did to that poor man?”

“Poor man, nothing.” Lady dropped into the chair Mr. Alluno had vacated. “He was harassing Nero about the twins. Said they were truant, and made some frankly insulting assertions. I heard it all from the hallway.”

“So then Lady came in and said she was their private tutor—by the way, ‘Lady Kalina Bolingbroke’?” Nero shot her a skeptical look.

“Well, I wasn’t about to give him my _real_ name,” Lady scoffed. “What if he’d looked me up? Anyway, then the creep practically accused us of having an affair, and threatened to reveal it to you.”

Kyrie blinked wide, concerned eyes at them. “Oh! Oh, dear. Are you?” Their laughter died suddenly, and they stared back at her in growing dismay. She let them suffer for a few seconds before breaking into a laugh, herself. “Now _that_ _’s_ what I wish I had a photo of,” she giggled. “Your faces!”

Nero’s breath left him in a rush; his lungs had completely failed to function when he’d thought, for an instant, that she doubted him. “Not funny.”

“It _was_ a little funny,” Lady admitted. She glanced over at the twins, who were still sitting on the couch, confused by the adults’ laughter. “And _you_ were pretty darn impressive.” She reached over and took the book from Zaffiro’s lap, skimming the pages. “Where on earth did you learn to read Latin?”

“Father taught us.” Zaffiro’s brow furrowed. “I think. I’m not sure.”

“Us?” Nero glanced at Rosso. “You know Latin, too?”

Rosso fidgeted with his activity book. “I’m not as good at it as my brother is,” he mumbled. “He’s better at all the languages.”

Nero was about to ask how many languages they had actually studied when Lady cut him off. “You said your _father_ taught you?” She exchanged a glance with Nero before crouching in front of the couch. “You remember your father?”

Zaffiro shrugged. “I dream about him sometimes.”

“Me, too,” Rosso put in. “And Mother. And the house.” He twisted to look up at Nero. “Are we ever going back there?”

Nero swallowed. He’d only seen the ruins from a distance, but considering the destruction spread across the rest of the city, he doubted there was much left of their childhood home—and their parents were long gone. Still, it was clear how desperately Rosso wanted a positive answer, and Nero hated to crush the hope in any child’s eyes. “It’s a long way away. You two are gonna stay with us for now, okay?”

The twins nodded, their disappointment obvious. Kyrie caught Nero’s eye before bouncing the groceries higher on her hip. “You know, I could use some help putting away the food. Rosso, Zaffiro, could you help me in the kitchen?”

The boys followed her out, leaving Lady and Nero alone in the living room. “Well, that’s interesting,” Lady murmured. “How much do you think they remember?”

“I’ve been trying to figure that out. They’ve never questioned why we’re calling them by different names, and they’ve never asked anything too specific, so I thought their memories were just images left over from when they were babies.” Nero frowned. “But they keep talking about things they learned in their dreams. Zaffiro knows how to play violin and read Latin, and _we_ sure as hell didn’t teach him those things.”

Lady’s eyebrows shot upward. “Violin?”

“Yeah. I guess Vergil was a child prodigy or something.” Nero snorted. “Wish I’d inherited some of his brains along with the rest.”

“What about Dante? Er… Rosso, I mean.”

“I’ve been meaning to turn him loose with my guitar to find out. He mentioned playing.”

Lady paced across the room and back. “So it seems some of their trained skills have carried over, but we don’t know about discrete _memories_. We’d need a way to test whether they can remember individual events in their lives.”

“Problem is, I don’t know any individual events to ask about. Has Dante ever told you anything about his childhood?”

She shook her head. “He’s always been pretty tight-lipped about his past. Maybe Trish knows more, since she mentioned… You know. About Vergil.”

Nero suppressed a shudder. “Yeah. Any idea when she’s getting here?”

“Probably not for a few days. Morrison said she’d had to go pretty far out of town for that job.” Lady stretched her arms over her head. “I guess in the meantime, we just have to see if they dream up anything with _details_ instead of just general knowledge.”

“I guess so.” Nero glanced toward the kitchen. “Is it wrong of me to hope they don’t?”

Lady’s eyes softened. “No. Knowing what they went through as kids, I’m hoping the same thing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn’t resist having a little Vergil read… a little Vergil. *rimshot* The Latin text is quoted from Publius Vergilius Maro’s _Georgicon_ , book IV. It describes Orpheus’s return journey from the underworld—a topic I thought the Order might reasonably be interested in.
> 
> The other quote is from _The Mystery of the Silver Spider_ by Robert Arthur, a middle-grade entry in the series _The Three Investigators._


	26. Chapter 26

When Nero called to check in with Nico the next morning, she still had no word of any demon sightings. “But every one o’ my contacts knows to call me th’ instant they hear a peep about demons _or_ that hunter chick,” she assured him. “We’ll catch up to her sooner or later.”

“Let’s hope it’s sooner, if she’s going around summoning demons.”

Nico gave a thoughtful hum. “I mean, it _does_ mean job security for us, if she’s turnin’ them things loose on the city. People’ll pay more if there’s a bigger threat. Wonder why I never thought o’ this before…”

“Nico!” Nero growled. “Fortuna has enough problems without you setting up some kind of demon protection racket. That’s just the kind of shit the Order pulled on them.”

Lady, who was finishing breakfast at the kitchen table, nearly choked on her toast. “Protection racket?” she sputtered.

Nico completely ignored Nero’s rebuke. “Hey, that sounded like Lady. Is she in town?”

“Yeah, she just got in yesterday.”

“Put her on! I got some questions for her.”

Nero handed the receiver over to Lady before ducking beneath the stretched cord to start washing the dishes. Lady’s half of the conversation consisted mostly of affirmative or negative grunts around bites of food, but she concluded the conversation with, “All right. I’ll come over in a little while, and we can check. Right. See you shortly.”

Nero tried not to sound like he’d been eavesdropping. “You going somewhere?” he asked when she’d replaced the phone on the cradle.

“Nico wants my help narrowing down the specific kind of summoning technique that new hunter of yours is using. She thinks maybe it’ll help you figure out who she is or where she comes from.” Lady shrugged. “I’m certainly no expert on summoning rituals, but I suppose I can look through books as well as the next girl. Nico says she took photos of the seal at the hotel.”

“I don’t know what good it will do, but I guess it’s the only lead we have right now.” His hands were submerged to the elbow in suds, so Nero scratched his nose against his shoulder. “You gonna take your bike?”

“No, I think I’ll just walk. There’s no rush, and I don’t want to have to unload all the pyrotechnics in case we need to transport them somewhere later.” Lady collected her dishes and carried them to the sink. “Do you need any help with that?”

“Nah, I do this four days a week. I’m a pro. Just put them in the water with the others.” Nero bobbed his neck forward to point at the left side of the divided sink with his chin.

Lady laughed. “I believe it. You’ve got the hands-free communication down.”

In return, Nero flicked a few soap bubbles in her direction. She easily dodged and escaped the kitchen to find her boots.

Soon Lady had departed for Nico’s, all the dishes were dried and put away, and Kyrie had confirmed that there was no pressing housework he needed to do. Without a task to focus on, Nero’s mind fretted at the loose threads of every challenge they’d encountered since his return. Where had the Nilepoch gone, and when would it return? Who was this teenage girl, and why was she summoning demons? Why were Rosso and Zaffiro growing so fast, and how much did they truly remember? What would they do for money once Nero’s last paycheck from the docks had been spent?

To distract himself from his frustration at the endless dead ends, Nero went upstairs and dug his old guitar out storage.

Rosso was flopped across the couch when Nero entered the living room, but he bolted upright when he spotted the dusty case. “A guitar!”

“Yep. I used to play a lot when I was younger. Scoot over, will ya?” Nero laid the case out on the couch and flipped down the latches. “Now, you gotta be real careful with this thing, okay?”

Rosso nodded enthusiastically, and his eyes stretched wide as Nero lifted the acoustic guitar from its case. “It’s so cool!”

Nero laughed. The secondhand instrument had been the first purchase he’d made with his meager salary after joining the Holy Knights. He had initially used a sticker advertising his favorite band to cover a scuff on the front, and gradually added more until nearly the entire wood surface was covered in colorful decals. It really looked like something only a teenager could have produced, but it held a lot of sentimental value for him. “Okay, let me see if I can get this thing tuned. I haven’t played it in years.”

Rosso watched, fingers twitching in anticipation, as Nero adjusted the strings. At last he handed it over to the boy, who settled it over his lap on the couch. “It’s really big,” Rosso observed, stretching his small fingers to fit around the neck.

“Yeah, I don’t have a kid-sized one. But I bet you’ll grow into it pretty quick.” At the rate they were growing, Nero suspected the twins would be pushing adulthood within just a few months. The realization that he might soon have to deal with _teenage_ versions of Dante and Vergil petrified him, and he quickly shoved the image from his mind.

After a few false starts, Rosso managed to produce a series of chords and work through a simple fingering exercise. His playing wasn’t nearly as fluid as Zaffiro’s, but he displayed just as much enthusiasm. Nero watched as the boy tried to pick out a melody and wondered what role music had played in their early lives, and if they still carried the same passion for it as adults. Dante kept his electric guitar and drum set on display, and Nero knew the ancient jukebox in his office was loaded with rock tunes. Vergil, on the other hand, didn’t strike Nero as the rock-and-roll type.

Nor, it seemed, did he care much for Rosso’s halting attempts at playing the guitar. Zaffiro had been curled up in the armchair, finishing his latest book, but as Rosso fumbled through chords his expression soured. After several minutes he scrambled out of the chair and replaced the book on the shelf.

“Are there any more books?” Zaffiro asked Nero, raising his voice over Rosso’s exploratory strumming. “I’ve read all of these.”

“All of them?” Nero stared at the kids’ bookshelf in the corner. There weren’t more than a few dozen books, and Zaffiro certainly read at a staggering rate, but he hadn’t expected him to exhaust their tiny library so quickly. “I’m not sure we have anything else for your age level.”

Zaffiro’s eyes shifted to the stack of leatherbound books beside the armchair. “They don’t have to be children’s books. I don’t mind reading longer ones.”

Nero made a mental note to move the remaining volumes from the Order library well out of sight. “I know you _can_ read those, but you shouldn’t. They’re strictly off-limits.”

The boy frowned. “But if I don’t practice my Latin, I’ll forget it.”

“I’m pretty sure you won’t.” A sudden thought struck Nero. “Hey, I do have _one_ book I could let you look at, if you promise to be careful with it.”

Zaffiro looked insulted at the implication that he might be anything but. “I’m _always_ careful with books.”

“Right.” Nero weighed the odds that Zaffiro might sneak a peek inside one of the Order’s volumes as soon as he left the room. “Why don’t you wait for me in your bedroom, and I’ll bring it down, okay?”

Zaffiro agreed, and Nero hurried upstairs to find the book. When he returned to the ground floor, he could still hear Rosso plucking at the guitar in the living room. In the bedroom, Zaffiro was sitting patiently on his bunk. Nero sat beside him, summoning the fortitude to go ahead with this test.

“What kind of book is it?” the boy asked, stretching forward to see what Nero was carrying.

“It’s a book of poems.” Almost reverently, Nero handed him the slim volume. “This is a special book. It… uh, it belonged to my father. He really liked it, and I think maybe you will, too.”

Zaffiro traced his fingers over the debossed V in the cover before opening it. The bright watercolors seemed to leap from each page. “I know this book,” he said slowly, turning the pages one by one. “I’ve read it before. I remember the pictures.” He stopped at a page with flowing script framed by a tree, crowning a rather bulldog-like rendering of a tiger. “Oh, I like this one!” He rested his hand on the page and recited:

 _Tyger Tyger, burning bright,  
_ _In the forests of the night;  
_ _What immortal hand or eye,  
_ _Could frame thy fearful symmetry?_

Nero’s eyes never left the boy’s hand as he continued through the six stanzas of the poem. Zaffiro’s fingers lay directly over the words; there was no way he was reading them off the page. The awful suspicion that had been growing in Nero’s mind was solidifying into a certainty. “Where did you learn that poem?” Nero asked when Zaffiro had finished.

“I used to read it a lot.” Zaffiro casually swung his dangling feet as he paged through the remainder of the book, the picture of careless innocence. “My neighbor gave me a book just like this. He said I should have it because I like books so much. I wrote my name in the back, so my brother wouldn’t take it.” The child scowled, a familiar crease appearing between his fine eyebrows. “Mother is always making us share everything. So I wrote my name in it before I took it home, because then it would just be mine.”

Nero’s pulse quickened, but before he could ask anything further, Kyrie appeared in the doorway. “Lunch will be ready soon,” she announced. “Zaffiro, you can wash your hands first, since Rosso is still playing guitar.”

The boy handed the book back to Nero and hopped down from the bed. “I do like this book. May I read it again some time?”

“Of course.” Nero’s smile felt wooden. “You’d better hurry and wash up.”

When Zaffiro had vanished down the hallway, Nero turned the book over. With trembling hands, he opened it to the inside back cover.

There, in neat but unmistakably childish printing, the letters VERGIL were inked onto the endpaper.

* * *

“They remember,” Nero said to the space beneath his arms. He was sitting on his bed, back to the headboard, knees drawn up and arms crossed over them, forehead resting on his forearms. It was a crude but efficient way of blocking out the rest of the world. He wasn’t sure he could process anything other than the single thought hammering away at the inside of his skull. “They _remember_.”

“Who remembers what?” Kyrie’s voice snapped him into the present, and Nero raised his head to find her staring at him from the doorway. She tilted her head and frowned. “Lunch is ready. Are you feeling all right?”

Nero wasn’t sure how to answer that, and apparently he took too long to decide on a response, because Kyrie came to sit beside him. “Nero?” she prompted gently. “What’s the matter?”

“The kids. Zaffiro and—” He shook his head. “Vergil and Dante. They remember their life.” He relaxed his coiled posture and slumped back against the headboard. “I don’t know how, but their memories are coming back.”

“I heard Rosso playing your guitar this morning. Is that what you mean? We already knew that Zaffiro retained some skills.”

Nero shook his head. “I showed Zaffiro this book.” He handed her the Blake volume. “Vergil left it with me last year, and I see him so rarely, I’ve never gotten around to returning it.” They’d also never had the promised rematch, for which the book had served as a promissory note—though after everything that had happened since, Nero wasn’t sure he wanted one.

Kyrie paged through the book. “And what did Zaffiro have to say about it?”

“Not only did he have the poems memorized, but he told me who originally gave it to him. He even remembered writing his name in the back.”

Kyrie opened the back cover, and her eyes widened. “Oh. I see.”

“Yeah.” Nero let his head fall back and winced as it cracked against the headboard.

“But isn’t that a good thing?” Kyrie handed the book back to him. “We wanted them to be restored to their adult selves, right? Memories and all? You wouldn’t want them to be the correct age but not know who they are.”

“Of course I want them back the way they were. But I don’t think they have _all_ their memories yet; otherwise, they’d know who I am, wouldn’t they? Or at least be asking some questions? I think they’re getting the memories back as they age. So what they remember now is only what happened to them up until they were six or seven—whatever age they are now. They’ve both mentioned dreaming about their parents and things, so maybe it’s coming back to them while they sleep.”

“If it’s all subconscious, perhaps that’s why they haven’t questioned their new names.” Kyrie cocked her head at him. “But it doesn’t much matter _how_ they are getting the memories back, so long as they do, right? I still don’t understand why you’re worried about it.”

“I’m worried because…” Nero’s fingers tightened on the book. “Because Dante never talks about his past. I mean _never_. I’ve asked him things—just normal conversational stuff, like where he grew up, or who taught him to fight—and I swear, I’ve never seen him clam up so tight about _anything_. I didn’t even know he had a brother until V told me.”

“But Dante’s always kept plenty of secrets.”

“Well, sure—I mean, he could have told me I was his nephew about five years sooner. But normally when he doesn’t want to answer a question, he just brushes it off with some stupid joke and changes the subject. It’s really weird when he refuses to say anything _at all_. And that makes me think there was a reason he wasn’t talking. A reason he didn’t tell me we were related until he absolutely had to. Like there was stuff I wasn’t supposed to know.”

“And if the children are getting their memories back a little at a time, you think maybe they’ll let those secrets slip out?”

“Yeah. I mean, I can’t deny that I’m curious about some things, but I don’t want to find out this way. It feels… dishonest, I guess. Besides, these are Sparda’s own sons we’re talking about! There might be a very good reason they aren’t talking. I mean, what if they’re the only ones who know what happened to Sparda, or where he is now?”

Kyrie grimaced. “You’re right. If the Order had suspected someone had _that_ information, I hate to think what lengths they would have gone to.”

“Exactly.” Nero shrugged. “Or maybe it’s nothing like that at all, and Dante just didn’t want to talk about it for some personal reason. I don’t know. I guess I’m already feeling a little guilty about how much I’ve learned about them since all this started.”

“You mean what Trish and Lady told you?” Kyrie hesitated. “Is it something you can share with me, or…?”

“I’m not sure.” Nero found her hand and squeezed it. “I really want to tell you, so you know where they’re coming from, but I’m not even sure they would want _me_ to know.”

She nodded. “I understand. It’s not your secret to share.”

“It really wasn’t Trish or Lady’s, either.” He sighed. “But both of them met Vergil when he was young—well, not _young_ young, but younger than we are now—so they knew more about how he came to be… the way he is.” Nero pushed away the images of torture the memory of that conversation conjured and stared instead at the book in his hand. He’d seen V reading it so often, he should have guessed it was something that had been precious to Vergil from childhood. He’d never dreamed that Dante’s eccentric, poetry-quoting client would become so important to him. “You know, V let a few things slip, too. We were walking through the ruins of Red Grave, and he pointed out the house he grew up in.” A wry smile tugged at his mouth. “It was pretty much in ruins, but it looked like it had been a _really_ nice place. Big, you know, one of those fancy old private estates. Probably had a servants’ entrance.”

Kyrie laughed. “Well, it _is_ hard to picture the Legendary Dark Knight Sparda living in an efficiency apartment.”

Nero chuckled. “Fair enough. But man, it sure would be nice to have a chunk of that kind of inheritance right about now.”

Kyrie rested her head on his shoulder. “From what you’ve told me about the way Dante lives, it doesn’t sound like there’s much to go around.”

“No, I guess not. Even if there had been, he probably would have squandered it all on pizza years ago.” Nero frowned thoughtfully. “Huh. I wonder if Vergil cooks for himself. Dante doesn’t have much of a kitchen, but Vergil doesn’t strike me as the pizza-for-every-meal type.”

“Well, when this is all behind us and things are back to normal, you can ask him.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Nero set the book on the nightstand. Against the darker cover, the V seemed to glow in the light streaming through the window. “I think I’m gonna have a lot of things to ask him, once this is over.”

* * *

Nero was just finishing up the dishes from lunch when the telephone rang. He balanced the plate he was washing on the edge of the sink and extended one soap-covered hand, but his reach fell just short of the receiver. A little burst of devil power and a flash of a spectral limb brought the phone to him, and he cradled it on his shoulder as he rinsed the plate. “Hello?”

“Open up the garage an’ grab your gear!” Nico’s breathless voice reached him. “Just got a call from th’ Neighborhood Watch. Somethin’ big’s goin’ down, an’ Lady’s comin’ to meet you.”

“Okay, but where are we—” Nero sighed as the line went dead. “Somebody really needs to teach Nico some phone protocol,” he growled aloud.

“Did something happen?” Kyrie entered the kitchen and took the receiver from Nero’s shoulder.

“That was Nico. Apparently there’s a job, or something. She didn’t say, but Lady’s on her way and I’m supposed to meet her in the garage.”

“All right.” Kyrie held out a towel. “Leave the dishes. You’d better get ready.”

Nero hesitated. “Are you sure? I just have a few—”

“Nero, I can do the dishes. I can’t kill demons. Go.”

“Thanks.” Nero kissed her cheek as he wiped the soap from his hands.

By the time Nero had prepped his weapons and unlocked the garage door, Lady was only one house away. “On the bike,” she panted as she jogged the last few yards. “Gotta go _now_.”

Nero freed Red Queen from her case and slung her across his back before swinging a leg over Lady’s motorcycle. There was scarcely room for his legs amid the missiles and grenades she’d brought, but he didn’t have time to rearrange anything; within a few seconds, Lady was in the seat in front of him, cranking the ignition. “Hold on,” Lady called back to him. It was all the warning he had before she released the clutch. The bike swung in a tight pivot, rotating around its stationary front wheel and leaving a thick layer of rubber on the floor of the garage, before rocketing out onto the street.

Nero clung to the frame behind the seat as Lady sped through the narrow streets of Fortuna, cutting the corners close enough that Nero feared losing a kneecap. The roar of the engine bounced back from the high stone walls on either side, making conversation an impossibility, but he realized soon enough that they were headed toward the old garment district.

At last the motorcycle’s velocity reduced to something resembling a safe speed, and Lady pulled into the shadow of a crumbling warehouse and cut the engine. “This is the place Nico described,” she called over her shoulder. Her voice sounded distant, and Nero realized his ears were still ringing from the unfiltered motorcycle noise. Lady hastily strapped on a belt and slotted several pistols into the attached holsters before unbuckling the straps holding Kalina Ann to the side of the bike. “Let’s go.”

Nero thought about asking her what they were hunting, exactly, but decided he’d find out soon enough. It was rare for anything other than Scarecrows or Chimeras to appear on Fortuna nowadays, and most days, those were barely enough to provide him with a good warm-up. He followed Lady through a sagging doorway into the warehouse, squinting into the dim interior as his eyes adjusted from the bright sunlight outside.

The back of his neck prickled, and Nero ducked just in time to avoid the spear of ice that lanced through the space his head had just occupied. The projectile lodged in the wall beside the doorjamb, scattering flakes of snow. “Frost!” Lady shouted from a few paces away. She was coming out of a roll; a patch of jagged ice protruded from the floor where she’d been standing a moment before. As she rose from her crouch, she swung Kalina Ann forward and launched a missile into the ice-covered demon that hovered a short distance away. The rocket punched a hole in the creature’s ice shield. Before it could recover, Nero lunged forward with Red Queen, plunging the tip of the blade through the narrow gap. The Frost screeched and swung a claw at him, but Nero ducked the attack and stepped in closer. He used his leverage to swing the demon in an arc over his head, still impaled on the sword. As the Frost’s head hammered into the floor on the other side, Red Queen cleaved the rest of the way through its body, and the demon burst into ash and snow.

“Haven’t fought one of those in a while.” Lady brushed some ash off her sleeve and shrugged Kalina Ann’s strap higher on her shoulder. “You get many Frosts around here nowadays?”

“I’ve seen exactly one other in the last two years, and that one was summoned.” As Nero spoke, two more Frosts charged them from either side. Lady engaged one while Nero battled the other, alternating exploding ammunition and fast sword slashes to wear down its ice shield. He knew lighting up Red Queen would melt through it faster, but that was a trick he could use only once—the sword’s chamber only held so much fuel—and with this many demons in one place, he needed to conserve it until they knew exactly what they were up against.

When the next two demons had been turned to ash, Nero registered what he hadn’t before: The sound of gunfire echoed deeper in the building. He and Lady separated, moving forward along parallel trajectories to cover more area. There was a pause in the gunfire, filled by the chittering of demons and the scraping of bladed feet, and then six more shots sounded in rapid succession. Nero counted the seconds before the next shots and swore. “Manually reloading a revolver. I bet it’s that girl again.”

“You think she summoned these?” Lady raised a handgun and blasted a nearby Scarecrow into sawdust. “Seems ambitious, for a novice.”

“I never said she was smart. She’s just a teenager.” Nero decapitated another with Red Queen and fired a dual shot into one that lumbered toward him.

“So was I, when I started.” Lady parried the blade of another demon before running it through with Kalina Ann’s bayonet. “For that matter, so were you.”

“Yeah, but I had training. And you had…” Nero watched her handspring through twin attacks, stick the landing, and follow up with a high kick that knocked a demon off its feet. “…gymnastics, apparently.”

“Well, when we find this girl…” Lady paused to roll a grenade under the feet of an approaching trio of Scarecrows. They went up in a riot of flaming burlap. “…we’ll find out what she’s got.”

Finding the girl didn’t take long, as she obligingly dashed through a door and into their path only seconds later, panting for breath. Strands of auburn hair were plastered to her sweat-glossed face, but the fear in her expression turned to vitriol when she caught sight of the more experienced hunters. The battered .45 revolver in her hand twitched menacingly toward Nero.

“Aw, _hell_ no.” Nero tossed Blue Rose into his left hand before his devil arm shot out and snatched the revolver from the startled girl’s grasp. “You do _not_ point a gun at me, you little b—” Just in time, some part of his brain reminded him that she was little more than a child, and he choked off the word he’d been inclined to say. “—brat!”

The girl slammed the door behind her and made a dash for the exit, directly in line between Nero and Lady. This time it was Lady who acted, dropping low and sweeping one leg in a graceful arc that knocked the girl’s feet out from under her. She tumbled forward and cracked her chin hard on the concrete floor, and a few seconds later her arms were pinned behind her back as Lady knelt over her.

“Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be,” Lady said. “Why don’t we start with your name?”

“ _Lasciami—_ ” The girl thrashed helplessly in Lady’s grip. “Let me go!”

“Strange name,” Nero drawled, twirling the revolver and Blue Rose in unison. “You wanna try another one?”

“Let me go!” The rage in the girl’s voice was beginning to sound more like panic. “Please, let me go! He is coming!”

Lady and Nero exchanged glances. “Who is coming?”

“The light demon! The big one!” The girl risked bumping her bruised chin on the pavement again to twist back toward the door she’d run through. Her eyes were stretched wide with unfeigned fear. “Please, please let me go!”

“So you accidentally summoned something a little bigger than you could handle, is that it?” Nero dropped into a crouch and grinned down at her. “Maybe you should think twice about messing with powers beyond your understanding, Red.”

“I did not summon him!” The girl squirmed for all she was worth. “We must go before he—” From the next room came the sudden groaning of strained metal, and the door shifted in its frame. “Please, we must go _now!_ ” the girl sobbed.

More metal creaked, and this time the door itself dented inward. Nero rose from his crouch, eyes on the bulging door. “Okay, Red, if you want us to let you go, tell us what you know. What’s on the other side of that door?”

“I don’t know!” she shrieked. “I was training, and he suddenly appeared. Please, he will kill all of us!”

Lady glanced up at Nero. “If it’s something big, we can’t fight it and hold onto her.”

Nero frowned. “She could be bluffing. She did that last time I had her.”

The door shuddered as something large collided with it from the other side. “If that’s a bluff, this kid could clean up at the World Poker Championships.” Lady rose, maintaining her grip on one of the girl’s wrists and hauling her to her feet as well. “Do we let her go, or put her to work?”

“I don’t trust her with a gun,” Nero said, but the last words were lost beneath the screech of rending metal as the doorframe tore free from the wall, leaving a sizeable gap. Nero pitched the girl’s .45 aside and drew Red Queen, and beside him Lady released their captive to level Kalina Ann at the new threat. The girl bolted for the exit, but Nero hauled her back with his devil arm and dropped her beside her revolver. “Pick it up. You wanted to play at this job, now you get to see what it’s really like.”

“He’ll kill me!” the girl wailed.

“Should have thought of that before you started summoning demons,” Nero snarled. “Now pick up the gun before I decide to use you as bait.”

The girl eyed his right arm, still glittering with demonic power, and reluctantly scooped up the revolver. “Bullets do not harm him. I tried before.”

Whatever Nero was about to answer was wiped from his mind as the rest of the doorframe peeled away from the wall, and they got their first look at their target. Only a fraction of it was visible through the hole in the wall, but that was enough for Nero to recognize the bulbous purple-black form, the energy pouring off it like smoke, the traces of violet light that seeped from its mouth.

“Shit,” he breathed.

The Nilepoch’s head angled toward them.

“Shit,” Nero repeated. “ _Run!_ ”


	27. Chapter 27

They didn’t make it far.

The Nilepoch opened its mouth, and the rest of the room seemed to dim as a ball of violet light gathered between its bifurcated jaws. Lady dove to one side and took shelter in the shadow of one of the building’s support pillars, while Nero all but dragged the girl behind a stack of wooden palettes that had been left against a wall. Seconds later, a beam of eye-searing light sliced through the place where they had been standing.

Metal grated and screeched again as the demon thrashed against a doorway too small to admit its full body to the room. Nero leaned out from his shelter just long enough to make sure Lady was all right. She flashed him a thumbs-up and pointed toward the exit, but Nero shook his head, patted the skids he was crouched behind, and shrugged as he gestured toward the open area. The three of them couldn’t make a straight run for the door; there was nothing else in the room to shield them from another attack. From the looks of that beam, even the support pillars wouldn’t give them much cover if the Nilepoch’s aim were true.

The shriek of rending sheet metal warned that they had a limited time in which to make a decision. Lady risked a glance back at the door where the Nilepoch was trapped, then glanced thoughtfully over at Nero. She pointed at him, then mimed tying something around her neck and pulling upward.

“The hell?” Nero muttered. He returned a palms-up _Huh?_ gesture.

Lady pointed again, more insistently, then traced a circle in the air with her finger and made the same upward tugging motion. Nero gave an exaggerated shrug and shook his head. Lady rolled her eyes. “Tell her to summon something!” she shouted.

Nero hoped the Nilepoch lacked the intelligence to comprehend human speech. “What, is one demon trying to kill us not enough for you?” he snapped back.

“I’m betting it prefers real demons to humans. If nothing else, it’ll buy us some time!”

Nero turned back to the girl, who was crouching against the wall with the .45 clutched to her chest. “You heard the lady. Summon something.”

She glared up at him. “It takes time.”

“Then you’d better get started real quick, because I don’t think this guy fires warning shots.”

The girl glanced around the area and dusted a clear space on the concrete floor. “I need paint. Something to write the symbols.”

Nero looked around, but they were in a long-abandoned warehouse; even if there had been a pen or marker left behind, it would have dried up in the years since the building had been used. “I can’t believe this,” he muttered, bringing Red Queen around in front of him. “Why am I the one who pulls all the shit gigs?” He pressed his forearm into the blade, opening a narrow slice in the skin, then tipped the wound to drip blood onto the floor. “You’d better not waste any of this,” he growled.

The girl’s eyes widened, but she dug a scrap of paper out of her pocket, smoothed out the creases, and began copying the printed symbols onto the floor with a finger dipped in Nero’s blood. Nero squinted at the page. It appeared to be torn from a book, and the heavy cream-colored paper was similar to some of the volumes they’d found in the Order’s library.

He didn’t have time for more than a glance before the roar of tearing metal and crumbling masonry snapped his attention back to the immediate threat. “It’s through!” Lady shouted. She bolted out of her hiding place and dove toward the far wall just as another beam of light scorched through the pillar she’d sheltered behind.

Nero hadn’t seen whether she’d gotten clear, and he fought down the first wave of panic at her disappearance. “Lady, you okay? Talk to me!”

“Could _really_ use that demon about now!” Lady’s voice sounded artificially controlled, probably suppressing pain.

No time to worry about her injuries, though; he could already see the room’s shadows lengthening as the Nilepoch charged up another blast. He swung back to the girl. “Come on, Red, gimme something!”

The girl’s face was again drenched in sweat as she concentrated, mouthing words over the circle. She pressed her palms to the blood-ring painted on the floor, and Nero felt the tug as the veil between worlds was rent apart. A portal the color of clotted blood bubbled into being nearby, and a reptilian arm tipped with vicious claws protruded from the opening.

Nero didn’t wait for the demon to manifest fully on its own. He seized the clawed limb with his spectral devil arm, hauled the demon bodily through the portal, and flung it full-force in the direction of the Nilepoch—no small feat, since the summoned demon proved to be a Riot, of all things. There was another blinding flash, a shriek from the Riot, and then… nothing.

Nero leaned out from his shelter to scan the room. The Riot stood dazed in the center of the warehouse, swaying from side to side, its reptilian hide tinged purple and white. It reminded Nero of the damage V’s demonic familiars had inflicted on their foes—not lethal in their own right, but utterly draining. Nero had no doubt he could finish the Riot off with a well-placed punch if he so chose.

But he had no intention of doing so. There was no sign of the Nilepoch, and that meant it had absorbed the Riot’s power and would—in theory—be back to feed on it again at some point in the future. “Lady, you still alive over there? We gotta figure out how to box this guy up.”

“I’m alive. Not happy, but alive.” Lady staggered out of a dark corner, clutching one arm with the opposite hand. Blood soaked her sleeve below the elbow, and one leg bore several nasty-looking gouges. “Really wishing I’d had time to put my chaps on before we came.”

Nero winced in sympathy. “Did the Nilepoch do that?”

“Not directly. When I dodged that blast, I discovered where somebody swept up all the glass that’s been broken out of those windows.” She hobbled over to the Riot. “So apparently the plan worked.”

“Yeah, and if we can keep this demon on ice, we might even get another shot at the Nilepoch.”

“Any idea how to do that? The icing, not the shooting.”

Nero scratched his head. “Well, I guess there’s always Agnus’s underground lab. It’s not easy to monitor, but it’s probably the most secure place around here for keeping demons locked up.”

Lady frowned. “We’ll have to transport it somehow.”

“Shit, you’re right. I forgot we don’t have the van. Maybe we can borrow a truck. I don’t want to have to carry it through town.”

“You could always wrap it up in a carpet like they do in the movies,” Lady said dryly. “Though it’d have to be a hell of a rug to contain a demon of this caliber.”

“Yeah, that was a surprise. I was expecting a Scarecrow or…” Nero froze, then dashed back to the palettes, but the girl was long gone. He swore volubly. “Next time, I’m gonna staple that little brat’s feet to the floor.”

Lady had followed him more slowly. She examined the summoning circle with interest. “Well, that explains it.” Kneeling gingerly, she traced a finger through the congealing blood. “I take it this is yours?”

“Yeah. I left my paint can in my other pants, so we had to work with what we had. Why?”

“A Solomon’s Noose is the lowest level of summoning spell. On its own, it can’t summon anything more powerful than… well, than those Frosts we fought earlier. But if you use human blood, the level of the spell goes up a couple of notches. And you know what can summon even more powerful demons than _human_ blood?”

“Let me guess: The kind that makes up the _other_ twenty-five percent of my blood.”

“Bingo.” Lady straightened and wiped her hand on her shirt. “I thought she must be a really skilled summoner to draw something like a Riot across the planar divide, but it looks like your blood did most of the work.”

“Well, that fits. This kid’s been stealing our jobs, our pay, our guns, and now she even takes the credit.” He sighed and turned back to the Riot. “Come on, help me get this hell-lizard under wraps before it wakes up.”

* * *

It was nearly supper time when Nero and Lady staggered into the house, coated in blood and dust after bagging the Riot in an old tarpaulin and dragging it out to the castle ruins. At the sound of the front door, Kyrie appeared from the kitchen. “There you are! I was starting to…” Her eyes widened at the sight of Lady’s blood-darkened sleeve, and she hurried forward to examine the wound. “Lady! Oh, dear, this needs to be cleaned right away.” She glanced over at Nero. “Are you hurt, too?”

Nero shook his head, and Kyrie hustled Lady into the bathroom to treat her injuries, ignoring the older woman’s protests. When she’d gone, the children clustered curiously around Nero. “What happened to you?” Carlo asked.

“Uh… Bike accident,” Nero temporized. “Can happen to anybody. That’s why you should always wear a helmet.”

Julio frowned. “But Lady didn’t have a—”

“Hey, it’s almost time for dinner, right?” Nero cut him off. “Looks like the bathroom is occupied, so you’ll have to wash up in the kitchen.”

“But I can’t reach the kitchen sink!” Kyle protested. Flavia nodded in agreement.

Zaffiro’s eyes flicked from them to Nero. “We could reach if we stood on a chair.”

Nero could practically see the lawyer gears whirling in Zaffiro’s head. He shot the boy a warning look. “But you won’t, because that’s against the rules, right?”

Kyle nodded enthusiastically. “Because I fell down last time.”

“I bet we could jump up on the counter,” Rosso put in. “Then we wouldn’t have to stand on a chair.”

“You _will not_ jump on the counter!” Nero shook his head. “I have something that will solve this whole problem. Wait right here.” He went through the connecting door into the garage and began rummaging through the assortment of pipe and scrap lumber in the corner for the short stepladder he was sure was still around somewhere.

“It wasn’t a bike crash,” a voice said. Nero whirled to find Julio standing a few paces behind him. “Was it?”

“No.” Nero’s eyes flicked to the door, but Julio had closed it behind him so the others wouldn’t hear their conversation. At least he was keeping his promise to keep the others in the dark about everything Nero told him. “You think the rest of the kids believe me?”

“For now.” Julio shoved his hands in his pockets. “So what really happened?”

Nero went back to searching. “You know how I said there were different kinds of demons? Some weak, and some strong?”

“Yeah. You said the ones on Fortuna were the weak kind.”

“They usually are. But now there’s a strong one.”

Julio’s eyes widened. “Did you kill it?”

“Not yet.” Nero leaned back against a shelf. “Lady came here to help me hunt it down. Once she’s patched up, we’re gonna try to set a trap for it.”

Concern washed over Julio’s face. “Won’t that be dangerous?”

“Probably.” Nero shrugged. “But you don’t need to worry about us. We’re pros.”

Julio glanced back toward the house, and though he said nothing, his meaning was clear: Despite Nero’s assurances, Lady had still returned from the fight limping and covered in blood. Nero didn’t need the reminder that professional did not equal invincible. Even Dante, who was the most invincible person he’d ever known, had been defeated at least once. Twice, if you counted both Urizen and the Nilepoch.

But there was no benefit to dwelling on that. “Can you help me find the stepladder?” he said instead.

“It’s right there.” Julio pointed to the far corner of the garage, where the object sat in plain view.

“Oh. Right.” Nero retrieved the ladder and started to head back into the house.

Julio stopped him. “Nero…” Nero paused, and the boy’s eyes dropped to his toes. “Isn’t there someone else who could do it?”

Had it been anyone but Julio, Nero would have brushed the comment off with a joke about his own unparalleled skill. But Nero knew how Julio’s mother had been killed, knew the boy had watched his father die, and above all, knew how terrified Julio was of losing another parent. Which, no matter how hard Nero tried to deny the title, meant himself and Kyrie.

Nero unfolded the stepladder and sat on the top step, then beckoned Julio closer. “I told you I wasn’t going to lie to you,” he said when they were eye-to-eye, “so here’s the truth: Dante is one of the best hunters in the business. Maybe even _the_ best. And my old man is right up there with him. But somehow, this demon—the one Lady and I are hunting—it got the best of them.”

Julio chewed his lip. “So it’s stronger than you.”

“I didn’t say that. I don’t think it’s stronger than any of us; I think it just caught them off-guard. Lady and I are going in forewarned.” Not that it had given them any great advantage in the fight at the warehouse, though at least they’d emerged from the encounter alive and relatively intact. “But the thing is, even if it were stronger, it wouldn’t matter. I _have_ to be the one to hunt it down, because it… it took something from my father and uncle when it attacked them, and going after that demon is the only chance I have of helping them recover.”

Julio nodded slowly. “I know you want your dad to get better,” he murmured. “But…”

There was a long pause. “But?” Nero prompted.

The rest was scarcely above a whisper. “If something happened to you, I couldn’t do anything to fix it.”

Nero had no idea where that had come from. “I wouldn’t expect you to. I’m not your responsibility, kiddo.”

Julio toed the ground. “Because we’re not really family,” he mumbled.

“Because I’d never want you to be in any kind of danger. Because I don’t mind risking my own life, but I sure as hell don’t want you risking yours. _Especially_ not for me.”

“But your dad would want _you_ to?”

Nero sighed. “That’s different.”

“How?”

_Because it_ _’s my job. Because I’m not fully human. Because I’m strong enough to protect myself._ Nero tried and rejected half a dozen responses. They were too trite, or too risky, or too complicated.

_Because the father who barely speaks to me suddenly risked his own life to save mine. Because I can_ _’t let that go. Because I need to know why he did it, if he’s ever cared about me, if we can have a relationship that doesn’t revolve entirely around killing—_

Or too close to the truth.

“I can’t really explain it.” Nero cringed inwardly even as he made the flimsy deflection. “But there’s a lot more at stake here than my own safety. People are dying. This thing was killing on the mainland, it’s killed here, and it’s just gonna keep right on killing until we stop it.” He put a hand on Julio’s shoulder. “It’s not just my father and my uncle I’m doing this for. It’s for Kyrie, and you, and Carlo and Kyle and everyone else. I’ve lost too much to the demons already, and I’m not letting them take any more of my family.” Nero tightened his grip at the last word, and Julio looked up with tentative hope in his eyes.

At that moment the door to the house opened and Kyrie leaned out. “What are you doing out here? The kids say you told them to wait for you, and then vanished.” She hesitated as she took in the scene. “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah.” Nero released Julio’s shoulder. “Everything’s fine. Julio was just helping me find the stepladder.”

Kyrie’s eyes flicked between them, but she didn’t press. “Well, hurry and come inside. Everyone else is washed up and waiting to eat.”

* * *

Once the children were settled in the kitchen, Nero carried his plate and Lady’s into the living room. “Thanks,” Lady said, struggling upright from where she’d been slumped at one end of the couch. “I could have gotten it myself, but Kyrie wouldn’t let me.”

“No point in using that arm any more than necessary. Or the leg, for that matter. How are you feeling?”

“Better, after a couple of painkillers. It looks worse than it is. Probably won’t even scar.” She gave a wry chuckle and traced a finger over a stark white mark on her right thigh. “Not that anyone would notice if it did. I have more than a few war wounds already.”

Nero had always wondered more about the faint scar bisecting her face than any of the ones on the rest of her body, but it seemed rude to ask how she’d acquired it. “Let me set these down, and I’ll get us something to drink. Can you clear a spot on the coffee table?”

“Oh, sure.” Lady reached forward and began collecting several thick binders into a stack. “These aren’t Order books. What are all these?”

“Oh, let me get those!” Kyrie hurried into the room and practically dove for the table, whisking the binders out of Lady’s grasp. “I’m sorry, I’ve left a mess in here.”

“Why do you have all the photo albums out?” Nero slid the plates of food onto the table once there was space for them. “I haven’t seen those in years.” Not since before Credo had died, at least; Kyrie had packed all the pictures away after Credo’s funeral. Nero had always expected them to reappear some day, like the framed photo of her parents that sat on their dresser, but once they’d had a house full of foster children, they’d spent relatively little time looking toward the past.

Kyrie stacked the albums on the floor beside the table. “Someone from the alumni committee called while you were out. Apparently they’re holding a memorial service for Tonio on Saturday, and they wanted to know if anyone had any photographs of him or clippings from the school newspaper they could display. The school lost most of its archives six years ago.”

That wasn’t surprising; what hadn’t been crushed by the Savior’s destruction had still been at risk from the fires and flooding that ran rampant in the days following the Order’s collapse. “You find anything?”

“A couple of snapshots. Nothing worth displaying, really.” Kyrie flipped open one of the books to where she’d left a page marker and turned it to face Nero. In a grainy photograph, a grinning crowd of boys in football uniforms clustered around a small trophy. At one end of the group, wearing a denim jacket and trying very hard to look disinterested, was a sixteen-year-old Nero.

Nero’s stomach clenched a little at the image of the young, happy Tonio reveling in his team’s victory. To cover the melancholy, he groaned. “Man, that hair. I don’t know why you ever let me out of the house like that.”

Kyrie giggled. “You insisted. You thought it was cool.”

Lady swiveled the book toward herself. Her eyebrows arched at the shaggy mop on Nero’s head. “Oh, my. That’s certainly… a look.”

“Yeah, well, nobody said I had _taste_ when I was a kid.”

“You and Dante,” Lady mused. Nero turned a questioning look on her, and she tapped another photo that showed Nero’s unkempt locks more clearly. “That’s more or less the hairstyle he had when I met him.”

Nero blinked. “Really?”

Lady nodded. “I’m pretty sure he cut it himself. Probably using his sword. Possibly while blindfolded.”

Nero huffed a laugh. “Yeah, that kinda sounds like him. Probably too broke to afford a real haircut.”

“Oh, I’m sure he also thought it looked cool. He had _such_ an attitude back then.” Lady shook her head at a memory. “He had this awful habit of running out half-dressed. He always claimed he was interrupted before he could put a shirt on, but I think he was really just hoping someone would compliment his abs. _Especially_ if there were girls around. He would pose to show off, and everything. It was… embarrassing, frankly.”

“ _Dante?_ ” Nero gaped. “You’re talking about the same can’t-be-bothered-to-comb-his-hair, only-does-laundry-on-alternate-full-moons Dante? Went around striking muscle poses to impress women?”

“Like an honest-to-God gym rat.” Lady laughed. “He grew out of it eventually. Trish was the one who really whipped him into shape. She’d call him on his nonsense, and he’d actually listen to her.”

Nero’s laugh was a little self-conscious. “Well, you hang around with smart women long enough, and that’s bound to happen.” He winked at Kyrie, who returned a good-natured eyeroll.

Lady turned a page to display a picture of Nero from a year later, capped by a much more flattering haircut. “Now _that_ _’s_ more the look I remember. Though I don’t recall you wearing a uniform when we met.”

“Nah, I ditched the uniform as soon as I found a loophole in the regulations that said Holy Knights only had to wear the Order’s crest in the execution of their regular duties. So I painted one on my jacket and called it good. Credo wasn’t thrilled, but he couldn’t argue with the manual.”

“That picture was taken at Nero’s induction ceremony,” Kyrie supplied. “You did look very dashing in white, Nero.”

Nero scowled. “I looked like a ghost. White hair, white clothes… It was a bit much.”

“That’s Credo, isn’t it?” Lady tapped one of the figures standing beside Nero, resplendent in white and gold uniform.

Kyrie nodded, smiling wistfully. “He’d just been appointed Supreme General. He was so nervous about officiating.”

“It’s too bad I never got to meet him. I only ever saw him from a distance.”

“Under the circumstances, I’m not sure you would have seen his best side,” Nero said. “He was a little worked up, what with Dante assassinating his boss, and all.”

“Can’t say I blame him.” Lady’s finger slid to a man standing just behind Credo’s shoulder, also in uniform. He was staring sternly at the camera. “And this one?”

Nero leaned over for a better look at the photo. “That’s Lauda. Credo’s lieutenant. You’re definitely glad you didn’t meet him.”

“Hmm, I’m not sure I didn’t. He looks familiar for some reason.” Lady frowned. “Though I can’t think when I would have. Trish dealt with all the Order personnel. I was mostly just cleaning up stray demons.”

“You’d remember if you had.” Under his breath, Nero added, “Total asshole.”

Kyrie sighed. “He wasn’t _that_ bad, Nero. Just stricter than you liked.”

“He hated my guts and always went out of his way to show it.”

“Lauda was devoted to Credo,” Kyrie explained to Lady. “And the Order. He… seemed to feel that Nero wasn’t showing proper respect to either of them, and sometimes tried to rein him in a little.”

“Which mostly took the form of getting me in trouble whenever he could.” Nero frowned at the picture. “Wonder whatever became of him.”

“He didn’t attend the memorial we had for Credo, so he must have been injured or killed in the collapse. Credo meant so much to him, he wouldn’t have missed it otherwise.” Kyrie shook her head. “I probably should have tried to find out what happened to him, but with everything that we went through, and Credo… And we lost so many friends, then…”

“Don’t feel guilty. You had more than enough on your plate,” Nero assured her. He blinked at his own words and looked down at the table. “Oh. Hey, speaking of plates, we should probably get to ours before the food gets cold.”

“Yes, you should. Enough of this depressing talk about the past.” Kyrie took the album and set it atop the others. “Eat up! There’s plenty more in the kitchen.”


	28. Chapter 28

Nico was not thrilled when Nero and Lady brought her the news of the encounter with the Nilepoch the next morning. “So lemme get this straight,” she said, planting her coffee mug on her workbench with excessive force. “You two not only lost the kid that stole Nell’s gun from me— _again_ —but you lost the demon, too?”

“We didn’t _lose_ it, per se,” Lady replied. “We… strategically repositioned it. Into the future.”

“An’ now you want me to build you some kinda monitoring system so you can see when it shows up for another snack?” Nico plopped herself on the battered barstool next to her workspace. “I may be a genius, but I’m not a dang miracle worker.”

Nero rolled his eyes. “It doesn’t need to be anything fancy. All we need is a way to calculate how long it takes for the Nilepoch to return, so we can be ready for it. Can’t you set up some kind of motion sensor, or video feed, or something?”

“Uh, sure, maybe if I had a friggin’ telecom network runnin’ over the whole island! But you went an’ put the bait in the castle. Underground. Two an’ a half kilometers away.” She threw up her hands. “We ain’t even got cell coverage there, let alone network access. Hell, ever since the dialup service shut down, ain’t nowhere on this whole island with workin’ Internet.”

“So you’re saying there’s no way to do it?”

“You got two an’ a half kilometers o’ spare cable lyin’ around? Cuz that’s what it’s gonna take to run a live feed back here.”

Lady paced the length of the small room, thinking. “What about a wireless relay?”

“Wireless?” Nico glanced around the workshop space, taking stock of components. “I guess I could put together a basic infrared relay with stuff I got here, but that’s line-o’-sight, an’ the terrain ain’t flat. You’d have to bounce the signal dozens o’ times.”

“We can do that,” Nero said quickly. “We can stake it out.”

“Over two an’ a half K?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

Nico spun the barstool in a slow circle as she considered it. “Well, I’m gonna need a lot o’ parts to make that many relays. An’ some poles to put ‘em on.”

“Poles, I can manage. We’ve still got a bunch of that old conduit, and there’s a ton of scrap lumber in my garage. Give us a shopping list and we’ll get the rest of what you need.”

“For starters…” She stretched across the table and picked up the remote control for her small television. “Get me a couple dozen o’ these.”

* * *

It took three days for Nico to assemble the relay units, and another two for Nero and Lady to stake them out on a path to the ruined castle. During that time the imprisoned Riot gradually recovered, becoming more active and testing its cell for weaknesses, but Agnus had built his containment units to last.

“I guess about the only good thing I can say ‘bout my asshole daddy,” Nico muttered as she wired another motion sensor into place in front of the Riot’s cage, a full week after she’d started the project, “what he did, he did real well. Too bad he didn’t use all that talent to make somethin’ worthwhile.”

“Well, at least you’ve found a way to turn his research into something good.” Nero tapped the Devil Breaker hanging at his hip. He didn’t need to use the mechanical enhancement against the low-level enemies he typically encountered on Fortuna, but with the Nilepoch’s return looming over them, he’d begun traveling fully loaded any time he left the house. “Even these creepy-ass cages are coming in handy, for once.”

“I just hate to think of what he used them for.” Lady swept her flashlight beam around the laboratory. Ghostly reflections arced through the barred enclosures and the machinery that had once churned out animated armor suits, fueled by the souls of Order devotees who had blindly assented to undergo the Ascension Ceremony. Those who survived it, like Credo, had been transformed into something both more and less than human; those for whom the experiment failed either became monsters themselves, or had their souls harvested to power the Order’s mechanical versions. “It looks like there used to be more equipment over here, doesn’t it? I wonder what happened to it?”

“Somebody probably came through and picked it up for salvage.” Nero joined Lady and frowned at the empty corner, which had been cleared of an entire bank of hardware. “Though it’s a little weird that they’d just take that one unit and leave all this other stuff lying around. I didn’t think anyone except us even knew about this place. Agnus did most of his experiments in secret.”

“Prob’ly ‘cause people would’a rioted if they’d known what he was really up to, Order or no Order. He was one sick bastard, that’s for dang sure.” Nico finished the wiring and stood. “Okay, that’s the last one done. Now, I just turn on the juice…” She connected the plugs that would drain a trickle of electricity from the Order’s old power stub, which she’d somehow managed to reactivate. She swore it was too small an amount for the power company to even notice. “Now, if this is workin’ right, that red light should come on when I break the beam.” She swung her hand into the path of the motion detector, and the red indicator blinked on. “Good! So once I get everything set up on the other end, we should get a blip on the monitor back home any time somethin’ comes stompin’ around here.”

“But there’s no way to know _what_ it’s detecting?” Lady verified.

“Not with this equipment. It’s practically put together with chewin’ gum an’ bailin’ wire as it is. But even the town kids who come out here to canoodle don’t make it _this_ deep in the ruins. Anything comes through these subterranean levels, it’s either a demon or a hunter.”

“Speaking of hunters, that girl had what looked like a page from one of the Order’s books.” Nero took his gaze from the perimeter, which he’d been scanning every few minutes, to glance back at the two women. “She probably scavenged it, same as we did, but there’s no telling what else she’s found.”

“I’m more concerned with how she’s been snipin’ all our jobs.” Nico scowled as she tossed tools back into her box. “Near as we can tell, she ain’t doin’ no advertisin’. Nobody seems to know who she is, but every time we hear of a demon sighting, she manages to beat us to the punch somehow an’ collect our payment. How’s she doin’ that? Is she psychic, or what?”

“Maybe she’s already there because she’s been summoning all the demons herself,” Lady suggested.

“Or maybe she has her own network of informants. When we get our hands on her again, we’ll ask her.” Nero checked the Riot’s cage for the fifteenth time. It still appeared secure, though the demon charged at him when he approached. It bounced harmlessly off the reinforced bars, and a low hum told him that the inbuilt shield that kept the occupant anchored to this plane was operational. “If we’re done, we should get out of here. It gets dark early in these hills.”

“Since when are you scared o’ the dark?” laughed Nico. “I thought you had, like, special demon night vision or somethin’.”

“Doesn’t mean I wanna have to carry your human ass back to town when you break an ankle tripping over something. Besides, Kyrie’s expecting us back in time for dinner.”

“Now _that_ _’s_ a good reason to hurry.” Nico hefted her toolbox. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Kyrie didn’t greet them as usual when they entered the house, which instantly set Nero’s senses on alert. “Hello?” he called to the house. “Kyrie? Kids? Anybody home?”

Nico glanced at the clock in the living room. “That’s weird. They’re usually home by now.”

Nero checked the kitchen to make sure Kyrie hadn’t left a note, but all he found was a pot of soup cooling on the stove. He stepped back out into the hall, Blue Rose in hand. “Something’s not right here. You two, check the garage. I’ll look out back.”

Lady nodded and drew one of her pistols before moving to the garage door. Nero continued down the hall to the back of the house, and a tingle of warning raced up his spine. They rarely used the back door; it opened onto a narrow crescent of weeds that vanished into a deep, rocky gully too dangerous for the children to play near, so the door was always kept locked.

Now it was standing open.

From somewhere beyond, Nero could hear a frantic voice that sounded like Kyrie’s. He slammed through the storm door, pistol in hand. “Kyrie!”

Kyrie whirled away from the edge of the gully. Her face was pale. “Nero!” she gasped. “Thank goodness!”

“What happened?” Nero scanned for demons, but the sliver of back yard was deserted. “Where are the kids?”

“I had Julio take them away as soon as it started. Rosso and Zaffiro…” She seized Nero’s arm and dragged him to the edge of the dropoff. “Down there.”

Nero leaned forward to peer into the twilight at the bottom of the narrow ravine. At the lowest point, the drainage from the city streets fed a stream that had been deepening the gully for centuries. He could just make out two dots of white scrabbling in the water. “How the hell did they get down _there_?”

“They were fighting. I don’t know how it started.” Kyrie twisted her hands in the apron she still wore. “Julio was helping me in the kitchen. The twins were in the bedroom by themselves. I heard arguing, and I asked Julio to check on them. When he said they were actually fighting, I told him to get the other children out of the house, and somehow I managed to separate the boys long enough to drag them out here. I was afraid of what they might do to the house if they really got going.”

“Are you okay?” Nero ran his fingers over Kyrie’s bare arms, looking for burns or bruises. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

“No, they were too focused on each other. I’m fine.” She looked down the ravine again. “I shouldn’t have let go of them, but I thought they had calmed down. But the second they were free, one of them ran at the other, and…” Her eyes brimmed with tears. “When they went over the edge, I thought they’d both be killed.”

“They’ll be fine,” Nero assured her. “Believe me, they’ve survived worse.” He squinted at the shapes far below. “Looks like they’re slowing down. I’ll climb down and get them.”

Kyrie grabbed his arm. “You can’t! A lot of those stones broke loose when the boys fell. They won’t hold your weight.”

“Luckily, I’ve just had a _massive_ adrenaline boost. Here, hang onto this for me, will you?” He unloaded Blue Rose and handed the pistol to her, then moved a few paces away, so he would land well downstream of the twins. “Be right back.”

He reached within for the ever-present flare of demonic energy and found it burning brighter than usual, thanks to the scare he’d just had. He released the pent-up power, and his human form burned away as the devil within burst free. Reveling in the fire spreading through his limbs, Nero leaped off the edge and plummeted toward the water below. A third of the way from the bottom, he extended his wings and dug the claws deep into the earth on either side, slowing his fall. He still landed with bone-jarring force in the stream bed, and the impressive splash drew the twins’ attention.

Rosso and Zaffiro just stared at the strange creature for a few seconds, but their eyes widened to saucer proportions when Nero began to stalk toward them. “You two are in _so_ much trouble.” His altered vocal cords distorted the words into an ominous growl. Both boys screamed and turned to run, but Nero’s quick hands caught them by their collars. “Oh, no, you don’t.” He tucked one squirming boy beneath each arm and began the long, slow climb back up the hillside, using his wings and clawed toes to dig into the rocky walls.

Lady and Nico had joined Kyrie at the top when Nero, damp, muddy and straining his devil form to its limit, finally reached the level of the house. Kyrie and Nico each seized one of the boys when they came within reach, while Lady took Nero’s arm to help him over the edge. Back on solid ground, Nero let his devil form dissipate before flopping on his back in the weeds, panting for breath.

Rosso and Zaffiro scrabbled toward Kyrie, their fight apparently forgotten in the face of a new threat. Both of them kept a wary eye on Nero until he got up and showed himself to be fully human again. “You two,” Nero hissed, still breathing hard, “inside. _Now_.”

* * *

Kyrie, the queen of multi-tasking, turned the heat back on beneath the pot of soup as they all filed into the kitchen. Nero set himself between the twins and the doorway to forestall any attempt at escape, though the boys didn’t seem to have the energy to try. Their feet were dragging, trailing mud and water as they placed themselves side-by-side in front of the refrigerator. They automatic way they took the position made Nero think this wasn’t their first experience with serious discipline, and he wondered how often they’d gotten in trouble together the _first_ time they were seven-year-olds.

“I don’t think I need to explain what you’ve done this time,” Nero began. The boys shook their heads in unison. Their waterlogged hair hung over their foreheads in identical mops, and Nero realized he actually needed the red and blue shirts to tell them apart. “You wanna tell me what all that was about?”

Zaffiro scowled. “He started it.”

“I did not!” Rosso protested. “He hit me with a pillow.”

“He wouldn’t leave me alone!” Zaffiro’s chin notched higher. “I was just trying to read my book.”

“He was ignoring me.” Rosso’s lower lip jutted out. “I just wanted to play a game.”

“So you’re both at fault,” Nero cut them off. “And in addition to fighting, you also violated the rule about jumping off high places. Do you realize you could have been killed? I ought to ground you for a year just for scaring Kyrie!”

Kyrie, who was surreptitiously stirring the soup, gave the boys a stern look. They hung their heads.

“You owe her an apology,” Nero prompted. The twins murmured that they were sorry, and for once looked sincerely chagrined. Nero filed that away for future reference. “And there are going to be consequences for your actions.”

Rosso’s eyes grew a little larger. “Are you going to lock us in the vault?” Immediately, Zaffiro gave his brother a sharp jab with an elbow.

“Knock that off,” Nero warned Zaffiro, before frowning at Rosso. “We aren’t going to lock you anywhere. Why would you think that?”

Rosso stared at the floor. “It’s what Mother always says,” he murmured.

There was _definitely_ something to unpack there, but Nero wasn’t in the mood to deal with it now. “Since Kyrie had to drag you out of the house, and I had to go down after you, we’re each going to assign you a punishment.” Nero glanced at Kyrie. “You can go first.”

Nero knew Kyrie had a standard list of punishments, which she doled out in accordance with the severity of the offense. Most involved extra housework or doing minor chores for the neighbors or the orphanage. The most drastic penalties deprived a child of a favorite activity or, in extreme cases, special food treats. This time, Kyrie didn’t hesitate before pronouncing sentence: “No snacks or desserts for one week.”

Nero stared at her in shock. She must have been _really_ scared. What was he going to add to that? The twins already had their activities limited by confinement to the house; the only time they really left home was to go to the park with the other children. Well, that and the infrequent outings they made so Zaffiro could play violin. He asked to go almost daily, but they’d only managed it twice during the past week. “No music practice for the same period of time,” he said. “The guitar goes back in the closet, and no visits to the antique shop.”

While Rosso’s shoulders had slumped at Kyrie’s punishment, Zaffiro had borne it stoically. But at the revelation that he was to be deprived of violin access, dismay washed across his face. “But—”

“You wanna make it two weeks?” Nero snapped. Zaffiro wilted, and he shook his head silently.

“Now, it’s almost time for dinner,” Kyrie said, her voice and manner almost unnervingly calm. “You two will go wash, change into clean clothes, and wipe up all the mud and water you tracked in. Immediately after dinner, you will brush your teeth and go to bed. I don’t want to hear any arguing or fighting whatsoever. Understand?”

Both boys nodded, and when dismissed they obediently filed out of the kitchen and headed for the bathroom. Only then did Kyrie slump back against the counter. “I am not cut out for raising half-devil children,” she sighed.

Lady and Nico, who had waited in the hall during the talking-to, joined them in the kitchen. “I hear you,” Lady agreed. “I’m starting to think Eva must have been a saint.”

“At least she had Sparda to back her up.” Kyrie shot Nero a grateful smile. “But I’ve got Nero, and that’s at least as good.”

“Just think,” Nico put in, “if you two ever have kids o’ your own, you’ll get to experience this all in real time!”

Kyrie’s smile wavered. Nero glared at Nico, but Lady jumped in with something reassuring. “Any children of Nero’s would only have one-eighth devil blood. And I’m sure it would be much easier dealing with only one at a time, instead of twins. Dante and Vergil have always been a bit… extra.”

“True,” Kyrie laughed weakly. “I don’t remember Nero being this much trouble at that age.”

Nero recalled being _plenty_ of trouble at that age—or at least getting in trouble plenty of times—but he wasn’t about to prolong that discussion. He brushed a loose lock of hair back from Kyrie’s face. “You’re still looking a little pale. You sure you’re okay? You want to put your feet up for a few minutes?”

“No, I’m fine, really. Just a little shaken.” She glanced at the clock. “Could you go look for the others, though? Julio is good at keeping them entertained, but it’s getting dark, and he won’t know whether it’s safe to bring them back.”

“Yeah, we’ll find them.” Nero gave her a quick kiss on the forehead and stretched up for the flashlight they kept on top of the refrigerator. “Not sure what I’ll tell them, though.”

“By the time you get back, I’ll have a cover story worked out.” Kyrie lifted a ladle of soup and tested the toughness of a carrot. “And this is just about ready, so as soon as you’re back, we’ll eat.”

* * *

Dinner was an awkward and frustrating affair. Eleven people was more than the kitchen could hold, so three of the adults took their soup bowls to the living room. Nero insisted Kyrie be one of them, while he stayed in the kitchen to keep an eye on the children. Rosso and Zaffiro weren’t speaking or making eye contact with anyone—less owing to their shame than because they were sulking, he thought. Julio was similarly subdued, casting frequent glances from the twins to Nero. The other children, agitated from their disrupted routine and sensing the tension lingering in the adults, were unusually fractious and difficult.

At last the soup bowls were empty, and Nero sent Rosso and Zaffiro ahead to brush their teeth while he doled out some leftover cookies to the remaining children. Kyrie hadn’t included dessert in the evening’s food preparation, but Nero wanted to make sure that Rosso and Zaffiro knew what they were missing—and he wanted to give them time to vacate the bathroom before excusing the rest of the children from the table. With the unsettled mood, it wouldn’t take much jostling to start a squabbling match, and they had already experienced enough drama for one day.

After dessert, Julio unexpectedly volunteered to help Nero with the dishes. The boy filled the sink with hot water and waited for the rest of the children to be well out of earshot before speaking in a low voice. “They aren’t human, are they?”

Nero blinked. “What? Who?”

“Zaffiro and Rosso. They aren’t human.”

“What makes you say that?”

Julio shot him a look. “I thought you said you weren’t going to treat me like I’m stupid.”

Nero sighed. “Sorry. I’ve had a lot going on.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured you’d say that, too.”

His resigned tone was a punch to Nero’s midsection. “You haven’t answered my question, though. Why do you think they aren’t human?” He glanced over at the boy. “Come on. For science.”

“So you can get your story straight?” Julio snorted. “Well, they’ve aged, like, five years in less than two months. And when I saw them start fighting, they…” His brow furrowed. “It was like they were on fire, or something. Like there was lightning all around them. It was weird.”

“Ah. Yeah, I guess that’s kind of a giveaway.” Nero handed a bowl to Julio, who rinsed it and set it to drain. “You’re only half right.”

“Half…” Julio frowned. “Right about which part?”

“They’re half human.” Nero scooped up some flatware and rattled it to drown out their words.

The boy’s eyes widened. “What’s the other half?”

“I’m gonna have to swear you to secrecy.” A knife slipped from his soap-slick fingers and fell into the sudsy water, and Nero suppressed a curse.

Julio gave him a flat look. “Is this secret somehow more secret than all the other secrets I’m already keeping?”

“It is, actually.” Nero thought of all the demons who had hunted Dante and Vergil as children, all the ones he’d fought who had scented the blood of Sparda within him and hungered for it, all the ones who might be attracted to a display of power and come to his home, the Nilepoch that might _still_ be coming, and realized just how much danger he’d put his family in. “This is probably the biggest secret I’ve got.” He plunged his right hand into the dishwater to feel around for the knife. The blade jabbed into his finger, and he instinctively turned his hand incorporeal to avoid slicing the skin open. Nero froze as he felt the hot water rush to fill the vacuum his arm had previously occupied. “Well, maybe the second-biggest. I guess there’s one more.”

Julio glanced back at the door as the other children filed past, homework or toys in hand, on their way to the living room. “I promise,” he murmured when they were out of hearing again. “What’s the other half?”

Nero swabbed the dishcloth over a plate. “What do you think?”

“Is this a test?”

“Let’s call it a creative thinking exercise.”

Julio’s hands stilled beneath the faucet. “Well, so far all the secrets you’ve had have been about hunting demons, so…” He frowned. “But if they’re half-human, then that would mean…” His eyes shifted warily to Nero. “Can demons and humans… interbreed?”

“Some can.” Nero made sure Julio was paying attention before handing him another soapy plate. “Not all. It’s pretty rare.”

Julio’s eyes stretched wide. “But not impossible. So Zaffiro and Rosso…?”

“…Are two of the three hybrids known to exist.” Nero was watching, and caught the plate as it slipped out of Julio’s hands. “You need a minute?”

Julio shook his head and took the plate back from Nero. “Sorry.” He rinsed the plate and set it in the drainer, then paused. “Wait. I thought you said they were your uncle’s kids.”

“Nope. I said they used to live at my uncle’s place.”

Julio frowned. “But you definitely said they were your family.” His eyes shifted to Nero. “And they even look like you.”

Nero turned off the water and made sure the remaining dishes were secure on a solid surface. He didn’t know how this was going to go. “I said there was one more secret. I’ll tell you if you want me to, but once you know it, there’s no going back.”

“What does that mean?”

Nero gave him a serious look. “That you’re probably better off not knowing.”

Julio was silent for a moment, considering this. “Is it something that’s dangerous for me to know?”

“Not necessarily.”

“You just mean that I’d be happier not knowing it.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

Julio’s teeth worked at his lower lip. Nero didn’t think he’d ever seen the boy concentrate so hard. “You said Kyrie knows everything. Does she know this?”

“Yes.”

“Was _she_ unhappy when she found out?”

Nero remembered that horrible moment when she’d seen his transformed arm, the first and only time she’d recoiled from him. Her rejection had felt like Nero’s heart had been torn from his chest. “She was, at first. But now…” Nero counted the moment she had finally taken his hand in hers among the happiest in his life. “Now she doesn’t mind knowing.”

“And _you_ don’t mind knowing it?”

Nero let out a wry laugh. Some days, he was thankful for his devil heritage, grateful for the power it had granted him to protect Kyrie and everyone else he cared for. Other times, he would give anything just to be an ordinary human living an ordinary, demon-free life. “The jury’s still out on that one.”

Julio was silent a moment longer. “You said I could stay here as long as I want,” he said quietly. “And if I’m going to stay with you, then I think I should probably know. It would be easier if we all know the same things, right? Instead of having secrets?” He lifted his gaze to Nero, and there was something almost desperate in his eyes. “Because we’re… we’re kind of… like a family, right? Even though we aren’t related?”

Nero’s throat closed as he recognized the thread that had run through their recent conversations. “Of course we’re a family.” He slung an arm around Julio’s shoulders and pulled him in. The boy had grown like a weed in the past year; the top of his head was up to Nero’s chin now. “Is that what you’ve been worried about?”

“I wasn’t worried,” Julio murmured, though his protest was belied by the way he returned the hug.

“Well, don’t bother starting, then.” Nero released him, but let his arm rest on Julio’s shoulder. “You know something? Sometimes the best kind of family is one you’re not related to. You can’t pick your relatives, but you _can_ choose who you want to be part of your life.”

Julio’s nose crinkled. “Did Kyrie say that? It sounds like something she’d say.”

Nero laughed. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we _do_ tend to hang out together. Me and Kyrie. For a while, now.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” The tension had drained out of Julio’s shoulders during their hug, but Nero could feel a little of it return as the boy took a deep breath. “So you’ll tell me the last secret?”

Nero let his arm fall to his side. “If you’re sure you want to know.”

Julio nodded. “I’m sure.”

“Okay.” Nero glanced toward the door. The sounds coming from the living room were muted, but if Julio reacted badly, managing the rest of the children could be a challenge. “But not here. Let’s take a walk later. When the rest of the kids are getting ready for bed.”

Julio nodded, and they returned wordlessly to the dishes.


	29. Chapter 29

“So,” Nero said.

Julio stared back at him expectantly.

“Okay. I, uh…” Nero laughed, feeling awkward. “Man, I am not used to talking about this.”

They were standing outside the back door, only a few paces from the gully that Nero had dragged the twins out of earlier that evening. It was enough distance that the children in the house, probably squabbling over space by the sink as they prepared for bed, wouldn’t be able to hear Julio’s reaction. If it were bad. Which Nero hoped it wouldn’t be, because after all his assurances that they were a family, he was really starting to think of Julio as something more than a temporary foster kid. And that was terrifying enough without imagining what would happen to that relationship once Julio knew exactly what Nero was.

Nero had pulled Kyrie aside and told her of his conversation with Julio and his intention to tell him the truth about his heritage, almost hoping that she’d talk him out of it, but she’d merely said it was his decision and she would support him in whatever he chose. He really should have known what to expect on that front. Kyrie was a firm believer in letting people make their own choices—which was commendable as long as Nero made the right ones. Unfortunately, it meant that when he chose poorly and dug his own grave, he often found himself stumbling face-first into it.

Julio was starting to shiver in the cool evening air, and Nero hauled his mind back to the present. “Okay. So. I told you Rosso and Zaffiro were half-human, half-demon.”

“Yeah.” Julio wrapped his arms around himself. “However that works.”

“Well, their father was kind of a special case.”

“Was he the demon or the human?”

“The demon. Their mother was human.” Nero unzipped his sweatshirt and handed it to Julio. “Here. You’re making me cold just looking at you.”

“Thanks.” Julio shrugged the hoodie on over his pajamas. “Why was he special?”

“You remember the stories about Sparda? The demon who protected humanity?”

Julio nodded. “Was their dad like that?”

“Not _like_ that,” Nero said. “Their father _was_ Sparda.”

Julio’s eyes widened. “You mean he… You said he was real, but I thought that was a long time ago!”

“It was. A couple thousand years, I think.”

“But Rosso and Zaffiro aren’t that old.”

“Sparda lived a long time. And Rosso and Zaffiro are older than they look.” Nero was beginning to feel the chill, too, and he shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Sparda was still kicking around the planet, doing his whole protect-humanity thing, up until maybe half a century ago. Then he married a human woman and settled down in Red Grave City.”

“No way!” Julio’s eyes were saucers. “My friend Michael’s dad is from Red Grave.”

“Yeah? Small world.”

“Maybe he knew them! Does Sparda still live there?”

Nero shook his head. “Not for the last few decades. His house is still there, though. Or at least it was, as of last summer.”

“Were you there?”

“I saw it from a distance. Nice place, until the city got trashed.”

“Yeah, we saw pictures of the sinkholes at school.” Julio’s enthusiasm dimmed for a moment, then returned in full force. “It’s cool that you got to see where he lived, though! So what happened to him?”

“To Sparda? I’m not sure. But anyway, after he settled down, he and his wife had two kids. Twin boys.”

“Zaffiro and Rosso?”

“Don’t jump ahead,” Nero said. “Some stuff happened, time passed, and the brothers went their separate ways. One of them became a famous demon hunter.”

Julio frowned. “But if he’s half-demon himself, why would he want to kill demons?”

“Because demons kill humans, and humans make pizza.” Nero grinned, but Julio just stared at him. Nero sighed. “Trust me, it’s funny if you know him. I guess he was just following in his father’s footsteps and protecting humanity.”

“What did the other brother do?”

Nero stopped himself before he could reply with _knocked up some woman on Fortuna_. “He… got into some trouble. Did some shady things.” Like sacrificing thousands of people to crown himself the ruler of the underworld, for a start. “But eventually, the brothers met up again and started working together.”

“Hunting demons? Like you do?”

“Exactly like I do. Only I make it look good.” Nero winked. “So that brings us up to, what, six or seven weeks ago? Just before Nico brought Rosso and Zaffiro here. See, these two brothers and some associates of theirs got called out to hunt a demon, but it was a kind of demon they’d never fought before. It had this weird power that let it steal another demon’s lifespan. So when it attacked them, instead of killing them, it shrank them back into babies.”

“It… shrank them.” Julio stared at him in frank disbelief. “How old were these guys?”

“Mid-forties, give or take.”

“And it shrank them… into babies?” Julio’s nose crinkled. “That’s impossible.”

“Yeah, I thought so too, until I realized who Rosso and Zaffiro were.” Nero shrugged. “Anyway, that’s why they’re aging super fast, and that’s why they have those lightning powers you saw. It’s because they’re actually the half-human sons of Sparda.”

“That’s crazy.” Julio glanced back toward the house, still absorbing what he’d heard. “You sure you’re not making this up?”

“ _Hell_ no,” Nero said fervently. “Believe me, if I were gonna make this shit up, it would make a hell of a lot more sense and feature a lot more demon ass-kicking.” Julio blinked at his language, and Nero cringed. “Don’t tell Kyrie I said… any of that.”

“Our secret.” Julio cocked his head to one side. “But that doesn’t seem so bad. I was expecting something a lot worse.”

“Worse?”

“Well, what you said, about me being better off not knowing…”

“Oh. That.” Nero swallowed. “No, that wasn’t the secret. That was just backstory.”

“Backstory?”

“So you can understand the secret.”

“Oh. So there’s more.” Julio stared expectantly.

“Yeah.” Nero drew a deep breath. “So, like I said, there are actually three human-demon hybrids out there. Vergil and Dante are two of them.”

“Who?”

“Zaffiro and Rosso. Sparda’s sons. Their real names are Vergil and Dante.”

“Oh.” Julio frowned. “Wait. Dante… Isn’t that your uncle’s name?”

“Yeah. It is.” Nero waited for the penny to drop.

It didn’t take long. “Is that the _same_ Dante?”

“Yup.” Nero tried to keep his posture relaxed, but he could scarcely breathe. There were so many ways this could go wrong, and he didn’t know if he could take a rejection…

“So… that would make you…” Julio’s eyes were wide. “If he’s your uncle…”

“That would make Vergil my old man. Yeah.” Nero smiled tightly. “I didn’t know until last summer.”

“So you’re… you’re Sparda’s _grandson_?”

At least the boy wasn’t recoiling in terror or anything. That was a good sign. “Yep.”

“That’s…” Julio’s mouth was dangling open. “So you’re, like, one-quarter demon?”

“Yeah. I—”

“Do you have any cool powers?” Julio interrupted. “Can you shoot lightning and things, too?”

“Uh… Yes, I do, and no, I can’t.” Nero hadn’t expected quite this level of enthusiasm. “But now you know how I got my arm back.”

Julio stared at Nero’s hand, still tucked into his jeans pocket. “You mean you just… grew a new one? Like a lizard’s tail?”

“Why does everyone always jump right to the lizard thing?” Nero rolled his eyes. “There was more to it than that, but yeah, more or less.” An idea popped into his head, and he held out his right hand. “Here. Gimme five.”

Julio eyed the hand suspiciously, but swung his palm down onto Nero’s. Nero phased his arm out just at the right moment, and Julio jumped as his hand passed right through the ethereal blue shape of Nero’s hand. “Holy _shit!_ ” the boy squeaked.

“Language,” Nero chided.

Julio’s eyes flicked from Nero’s hand, now whole again, to his face. “Our secret,” he countered, before prodding Nero’s solid hand with a finger. “How did you _do_ that?”

Nero repeated the trick. “I wasn’t lying about getting my real arm ripped off. There’s nothing here, really, but somehow my power concentrated into something that looks and acts like an arm—except when I don’t want it to. To be honest, I don’t really get it, either.” He shrugged. “But it’s a lot more convenient than the metal ones Nico made for me. A lot cheaper, too,” he muttered.

“So all that stuff about Nico using demon parts to make arms with magic powers was just a cover?” Julio sulked. “Aw, I wanted that to be real.”

“Oh, no, that’s all legit. She got kinda mad once I had my arm back, because it meant she couldn’t use me as a guinea pig for some of her crazy designs.” Nero flexed his fingers. “But demon-powered weapons go back way before Nico. They’re called Devil Arms. There’s a whole underground industry built around them. Dante used to make most of his money selling off the ones he picked up on his hunts.”

Julio’s eyes widened again. “Holy crap. I just realized… I mean, I knew, but I hadn’t… Rosso and Zaffiro are your dad and uncle!”

“Yeah.” Nero smiled grimly. “And now you know why I’m the only one who could take them in.”

“Which one’s which?”

“Rosso is Dante. Zaffiro is Vergil.”

“So Zaffiro is your dad? That’s gotta be weird,” Julio mused. “I mean, taking care of your dad as a baby?”

“Yeah, it was a little weird. It’s better now that they’re a bit older. I mean, at least we can have a conversation.”

“I bet it’s weirder for them, though. I’m not even a grown-up, and I can’t imagine going back to being a baby.” Nero didn’t reply to that, and Julio added, “Or don’t they remember being grown up?”

Nero shook his head. “As far as they know, they’re just normal kids. They don’t know who they really are.”

“Do they know who _you_ are?” Nero shook his head again, and a look of horror dawned on Julio’s face. “Will they ever remember you?”

“I hope so. Could be real awkward, otherwise.” Nero sighed. “I’m hoping I can figure out some way to reverse what was done to them, but nobody knows for sure. No hunter we know has ever dealt with this kind of demon before.”

Julio looked pensive. “If it attacks you, will it shrink you, too?”

“I honestly don’t know.” Nero tucked his hands back into his pockets. “Everyone else it attacked has died. Dante and Vergil are the only ones who survived. If it landed a hit on me, there’s a chance it could turn me into a baby, but there’s just as good a chance it would kill me. I’m gonna do my best not to find out.”

“You—” Julio began, but was cut off by the back door being flung open. They turned to see Nico standing in the doorway.

Nero was about to scold her for interrupting, but a glance at Nico’s tense posture and stormy expression halted the reprimand. “What is it?”

“We got a situation,” she said, jerking a thumb back over her shoulder. “I need you in the garage.”

Nero nodded. “I’ll be there in just a minute.” Nico went back inside, and Nero turned to Julio. “Sounds like work stuff. I just want to make sure you’re good with everything I’ve told you. I know it’s a lot.”

Julio nodded, thoughtful. “I’ll probably have more questions later.”

“You can ask me if you do.” Nero clapped him on the shoulder. “Now, it’s _way_ past lights-out. Think you can get yourself into bed without waking the rest of the boys?”

“Sure. They can sleep through anything.”

Nero followed Julio into the house and paused to lock the back door behind them. He was just passing the boys’ bedroom when he heard his name hissed from within. Stepping inside, he saw Julio already perched atop his bunk, wriggling out of Nero’s hooded sweatshirt in the light of his tiny reading lamp. “Your hoodie,” Julio whispered.

“Right. Thanks.” Nero knew he’d want the extra layer in the garage, if Nico’s business took more than a few minutes. He was still feeling the chill from standing outdoors.

He was about to leave the room when his eye was caught by Rosso’s bunk. The mussed covers and indented pillow showed where the boy had gone to sleep there just after supper, but the bed was empty. Nero ducked to check Zaffiro’s bed, and couldn’t suppress a laugh: The twins were tucked beneath the single blanket as usual, but this time they were sleeping with their backs pointedly turned to each other, each nearly hanging off his own side of the bed in order to maximize the space between them. Clearly, they were still too mad at each other after their fight to be in physical contact.

“Not mad enough to stay apart, though,” Nero murmured, gently shifting Zaffiro’s dangling arm back onto the mattress. “You two idiots really haven’t changed in forty years.”

* * *

Nico and Lady were waiting in the garage when Nero reached it. A toolbox lay open on the floor, and one of the shelving units had been pulled away from the wall. “So what’s going on?” He wriggled into his sweatshirt and zipped it. “We got a demon alert or something?”

Nico shook her head. “I figured out how our lil’ hunter girl has been sniping our gigs.” She beckoned for Nero to follow her to the displaced shelf. “I was hookin’ up the monitor so you could keep an eye on the ruins. Figured I’d run a line through the existing conduit to the receiver on the roof. That’s when I found this.”

Nero crouched to look at the bundle of cables Nico had pulled from the wall behind the shelf. One cord had been spliced—recently, judging by the dust-free edges of the electrical tape sealing the connection—and the spliced cable looped back through the conduit, presumably to something outside the garage. “This shouldn’t be here.”

“Damn right it shouldn’t. That’s the phone line, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“She cut into our phone?”

Lady nodded as she crouched beside Nero. “It’s an old-fashioned wiretap. You know all that clicking and interference you’ve been getting on the line? Classic symptoms of a tapped land line.”

Nero swore under his breath. “I should have realized. I thought the equipment was just getting worn out, like everything else on Fortuna.” He fingered the splice. “This was done from inside the garage.”

“Which means she’s been listenin’ in on all your calls _at least_ since that first break-in Kyrie found, while we were both out of town.” Nico scowled. “I’ll bet she was doin’ the same thing to mine, when my landlord spooked her. She must’a come back later to finish the job, since the Devil May Cry phone rings at my place.”

“So every time someone called to hire us, she eavesdropped on the details, and got to the job site first.” Nero shook his head. “It’s neat, I’ll give her that. She must have been watching us to see when we left town so she could set this up. She had to have been planning this for a while.”

“Or she might have engineered an opportunity once she was ready,” Lady said. “The job that got us all together that time turned out to be a wild goose chase, remember? Trish said they had the password, and they insisted that you two come in from Fortuna, so whoever was responsible had done their research. It was only by chance that Morrison called about the Nilepoch the next day.”

“Right. The clown warehouse,” Nero groaned. “Makes me wonder if that was some kind of deliberate message.”

“She’s been playin’ us the whole time.” Nico stalked over to her toolbox and returned with a wire cutter. “Well, we can put a stop to that—”

“Wait.” Nero grabbed her wrist before she could snip the line. “I have a better idea. We want to get our hands on this girl, right?”

“Oh, yeah. I see where you’re goin’.” Nico rocked back on her haunches. “I call you with a fake job, say it’s worth a lot o’ money if we can clear it out real quick, an’ we lure her out.”

“And we’ll be waiting for her. Three against one, there’s no way she can slip through our fingers again.” He glanced at Lady. “Assuming you’re willing to help.”

“Absolutely. Business ethics aside, if we don’t intervene, that kid’s going to get herself hurt or killed.”

“So it sounds like all we need is a location.” Nero frowned. “It needs to be some place we can all reach in a hurry, though. We have to stage the call and then get there before her, and we don’t know what kind of transportation she has. We can’t all fit on Lady’s motorcycle.”

“ _Or_ we could wait a couple more days,” Nico said. “The shop said they got the new wheels delivered today, and the van could be ready as soon as tomorrow, or Monday at the latest. It’ll work if we get Kyrie in on it. You an’ Lady take her bike to the ambush site, I make the call from my place, Kyrie says she’ll tell you, an’ then I drive the van there. Even if she’s watching the house, it’ll just look like I came over here an’ we drove there together.”

“I like that plan.” Nero smiled grimly. “And if we want to set up an ambush, I know just the place.”


	30. Chapter 30

The next afternoon, as they sat in the living room, filling Kyrie in on their plan while the children—minus Rosso and Zaffiro, who were still grounded from treats—had their Sunday snack in the kitchen, there came a knock at the front door. Kyrie opened it and beamed out at the newcomer. “Trish!” she cried, bustling the leather-clad hunter, still sporting her red bob cut, into the house. “Come in!”

“Hey, it’s about time!” Lady stood and went to greet her associate. “Morrison said you were out of town, not off-planet. Where have you been?”

“It was a difficult job.” Trish moved further into the room, and Nero noticed an unevenness to her gait. “Took longer than I thought to get back.”

“You okay?” he asked as she dropped onto the sofa beside Nico. “You’re limping.”

Trish dismissed his concern with a shrug. “I’ll live.”

“What happened?”

She glanced around to verify that there were no children within earshot before answering. “Got surprised by a remnant of the Phantom clan.”

“Phantom clan?” Nero echoed. “Who are they?”

“ _What_ are they,” she corrected. “Picture a giant scorpion.”

“Giant like football-sized, or giant like dog-sized?”

“Giant like city bus-sized, with a body full of magma and a disposition to match. Their clan leader was one of Mundus’s generals, and it turns out his family holds a grudge. When they realized I was the traitor who helped Dante defeat their sworn lord, they called down for reinforcements, and I had to fight my way through a gauntlet of angry arachnids before I could seal the portal they were coming through. I was holding my own until a lucky shot from one of them took my left leg off.”

Kyrie gasped, Lady winced, and Nico swore. Nero suppressed a shudder at the mention of a lost limb, a memory of pain racing through his restored right arm. “How did you get away?” Kyrie asked, her voice overflowing with sympathy.

“In the end, I defeated them—but barely. I used the last of my power to stabilize my body, then spent the next two days crawling back to civilization. Literally.” She stretched her legs out in front of her, moving the left one gingerly. “So I’m sorry for taking a few days off once I got back to the shop, but I was no good to you until I could restore my leg, anyhow.”

“Wow.” Nico’s eyes flicked from Trish to Nero. “So, uh, is the whole growing-body-parts-back thing something you _all_ do, or…?”

Trish shrugged. “Most of us can repair ourselves to some degree. There’s a limit to the types of injuries we can recover from—the ones inflicted by Devil Arms are especially hard to heal, since they damage the spirit as well as the body—but in my case, I only had to restore my original physical form. I’ll be running a little low on power for a few weeks, but after enough pizza and a spa day or two, I’ll be back to normal.”

“That’s understandable.” Lady perched on the arm of the couch beside Trish. “Maybe we should keep you in reserve until we actually track down the Nilepoch, then. No point in having you burn out before we really need you.”

Trish nodded. “It’s pretty much taking all I’ve got to keep up the disguise.” She brushed a hand through her red bangs. “You know, I actually thought of buying a wig so I didn’t have to expend the energy, but I couldn’t find anything I liked on short notice.”

“You could have just cut and dyed your hair, couldn’t you?”

Trish twisted to glare up at Lady. “I am _not_ making this look permanent.”

“It looks good, though,” Nico said quickly. “I mean, if you had to choose another look, it’s a good one to go with. Not that… not that you don’t look good normally. Because you do.” Her cheeks flushed pink. “I mean… Not that I really noticed, or anything… I mean, I _did_ n-notice, obviously, b-but…”

Nero nudged her with his foot. “You can stop digging now,” he grinned. Nico glared at him.

“I like the way I look normally,” Trish said. “And so does Dante. He once said I was like a living tribute to Eva.” She dismissed the matter with a shrug. “Anyway, somebody fill me in. What have I missed?”

While the others brought Trish up to speed regarding the Nilepoch and the rival hunter, Nero mulled over what Trish had said about her appearance. He wondered what Vergil thought of Trish’s resemblance to his mother, or if anyone had bothered to ask him. Did Vergil remember how Trish had manipulated him while working for Mundus? Did he resent her for it, or had he forgiven her, as Dante had? Vergil certainly didn’t seem the forgiving sort, but he also wasn’t the type to meekly accept living under the same roof as an old enemy…

“So once the van’s ready to roll, we’re gonna set a trap for this lil’ bitch,” Nico said, bringing Nero’s attention back to the present. “An’ we can’t do nothin’ about the Nilepoch until it triggers the monitor I set up.”

“Or shows up somewhere else,” Lady added. “We don’t know for sure that it’ll keep going after the same prey.”

“Well, I can stay here and watch the monitor while you go track down the other hunter, if you like.” Trish settled deeper into the couch, leaning her head back against the cushions. “Honestly, I could use another day or two off my feet.”

“Fair enough,” Nero said. “That keeps Kyrie from having to check it constantly, anyway.”

Kyrie nodded. “And if you’re here during the day, I can run some errands.” She hesitated. “That is, if you wouldn’t mind staying alone with the twins for an hour or two.”

Trish cocked an eyebrow. “I believe I’ve made my stance on baby drool and diapers clear.”

Nero rolled his eyes. “They’re basically eight-year-olds now.”

“You’re assuming I have any idea at what age small humans learn to use the toilet.”

“They’re well beyond toilet training,” he clarified. “And pretty much self-entertaining, for better or for worse. Though we will need to brief you on the house rules, because Zaffiro will exploit every possible loophole to get what he wants.”

“No change there, then.” Trish chuckled. “He—”

Nero held up a hand to stop her as Julio’s head appeared around the corner. “You guys done eating?”

“Yeah. You need more time? I can keep them busy for a few more minutes.” Julio caught sight of the new visitor, and he brightened. “Oh, hi, Miss Trish! I thought I heard the door, but I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Hello again.” Trish smiled back at him.

Nero noted the color rushing to Julio’s cheeks and was grateful that Trish had remembered wear a jacket over her bustier. “I think we’re good for now, Julio. You can release the hounds.”

Julio vanished, and a moment later a pack of children descended on the living room. Flavia climbed into Lady’s lap—her preferred location whenever Lady was sitting—while the rest clustered around Trish, peppering her with chatter and questions. Trish tolerated their pestering until one of them pressed too close and jarred her left leg. She couldn’t suppress the flinch of pain. Nero jumped to his feet and clapped his hands to snap the children’s attention to himself. “Hey! Nico, you said the shop told you the van was gonna be ready by five, right?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Well, it’s after three now. Why don’t you and the kids walk down there and see if it’s done?”

Nico scowled at being scapegoated. “They said they’d call when it was ready.”

“Yeah, but the kids want to go for a walk. Don’t you?” Nero let the cheers speak for themselves. “And I bet they’d _love_ to go for a ride in the van now that it’s all nice and clean.” The shop had offered them a great price on detailing, and Nico had agreed, since it saved her the work of vacuuming the shards of glass out of the upholstery.

“All right,” Nico sulked. “As long as you don’t touch nothin’ inside.” The children cheered again and ran to retrieve their coats.

Julio hung back, looking at Nero. “Do you want Rosso and Zaffiro to go, too?”

Nero hesitated. The twins were technically still grounded, but he knew they were already beginning to chafe at their restrictions, and venting a little pressure now might avoid an explosion later. “Yeah, the walk will be good for them. Make sure either you or Nico hold onto them, though. Oh, and keep everyone out of the workshop area in the van. There’s ammunition stored behind it.”

“An’ no playin’ with my jukebox!” Nico added. “Thing’s touchy enough as it is.”

“Got it.” Julio gave a little salute and headed for the bedroom to collect the twins. Nico went to retrieve her own jacket from the closet.

As the last of the group bustled out the door, Kyrie beamed up at Nero. “I’m glad you told him the truth. I think he’s really proud to be helping out.”

Trish raised her eyebrows. “I thought you were deliberately keeping them in the dark. How much do they know?”

“Only Julio. The rest are still too young.” Nero sat again. “He knows about Dante and Vergil. And me.”

“And me?”

He shook his head. “I only told him you’re Dante’s partner.”

“Well, it’s good to know I have some informed backup if they get out of hand.”

“He’s only twelve,” Nero reminded her. “And human. If they get in a fight, _do not_ send him in to break it up.”

“I won’t. I may be running low on power, but I still have enough energy to put on an impressive light show. I can stop anything they start.”

“Yeah, but _their_ light shows sting a bit. I’ve gotten zapped by them a few times. I’m starting to think Eva must have used a fire hose to break up their squabbles.”

“You know,” Lady mused, “I’m surprised they’re this strong already. I’d always gotten the impression that they didn’t come into their powers until they were much older.”

“I’m sure they had some abilities from birth,” Trish said. “When I met Dante, one of the very first things he told me was that he’d had powers since he was a child.”

Kyrie laughed. “What an odd thing to say to someone you’ve just met.”

“Well. I _had_ just pinned him to the wall with his own sword and hurled a motorcycle at his face.” She smiled fondly. “Those were the days.”

“Right,” Nero muttered. “She’s gonna make a _great_ babysitter.”

“Fortunately, the twins are indestructible.” Lady got to her feet. “And since they and the rest of the kids are out of the house, we should use this time to get everything ready for tomorrow.”

* * *

Early the next morning, Nero and Lady rolled into the maze of empty warehouses near where he had discovered Tonio’s coat. “You sure this is the best place?” Lady asked as they concealed her motorcycle in a dark alley.

“The whole area’s deserted, so if she gets trigger-happy, nobody’s around to get hurt. I called Tasso last night to warn him off. He told me the only other people who come through here are the dock workers, and this time of day, I happen to know they’ll be unloading cargo. And there are plenty of places to hide so she doesn’t see us on the way in.”

“I suppose you’re right. The terrain’s a little rough, with all this debris, but I guess there shouldn’t be much actual fighting.”

“Shouldn’t be _any_ , if we do this right.”

“Hopefully she goes quietly,” Lady sighed. “I don’t want to hurt her. She may be misguided, but she’s just a kid.”

“She’s a cheating pain in the ass who opened our first conversation by shooting at me with a stolen gun,” Nero reminded her. “But you’re right. We shouldn’t need to use violence to bring her in.”

“Of course, if it stays like this, we could just build a fire and wait for her to seek out the heat on her own.” Lady shivered and zipped her motorcycle jacket higher. “It’s a lot colder than I expected out here.”

“Yeah, this time of year, the sun stays too low behind the hills to burn off all the fog. The wet just seeps into your bones.” He flipped his hood up to cover his ears. “We’ve still got some time before Nico makes the call, so I guess we’d better get comfortable.” He glanced around at the collapsed brickwork and torn metal around them. “Or… at least get out of the wind.”

They found a sheltered corner where they could observe the warehouse’s main entrance without exposing themselves, shifting frequently to keep their muscles from cramping in the cold as they waited. After half an hour, Nero heard the putter of a two-stroke engine approaching. “Scooter,” he murmured. “Lot of old Italian models around here. That one’s in dire need of a tune-up.”

The engine coughed and died, and a haze of blue-gray smoke drifted through the open area they could see just beyond the warehouse entrance. “Bad piston ring,” Nero whispered, fighting the urge to sneeze at the acrid smell.

Lady rolled her eyes. “After we take away her guns, you can offer to fix it for her,” she whispered back.

They fell silent as a shadow appeared through the haze. Moving cautiously, the red-haired girl entered the warehouse, the old .45 revolver clenched in her hands. She was dressed in a tattered zip-front sweatshirt with bulging pockets and the same faded pants and shoes Nero had seen her in the last two times. From the way she shivered, he doubted if she owned any more layers of clothing to keep her warm. As angry and frustrated as he was with the girl, he couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for her.

The redhead paused every few steps to listen, and Nero realized she was trying to figure out where the fictitious demons were. The warehouse was silent except for the faint, muted sounds coming from the docks, but they needed her to move a little deeper into the building before they could confront her without risk of her running out the way she’d come. He carefully picked up a piece of gravel, then tossed it toward the adjacent wall. It landed with a clatter, and the girl whipped the revolver toward the sound.

Nero gestured to Lady, who nodded and waited for their target to begin moving again before creeping out of her hiding place, timing her steps to match. After a minute, she was positioned squarely between the girl and the entrance, and Nero moved out to cover the only other avenue of escape—the shortcut used by the dock workers.

“It was a good setup,” Nero said, his voice startlingly loud in the empty space. The girl sucked in a shrieking breath and whirled to face him, flinging the pistol up defensively. Her grip was wrong, Nero noted. She’d do her wrists in, shooting like that. “I’ll give you that. It actually took us a while to figure out how you were listening in.”

She glanced toward the entrance and spotted Lady, and a little fear edged into her expression. It shifted toward panic when the Devil May Cry van roared up at the entrance a few seconds later. She pointed the revolver at Nero. “Get out of my way.”

“Now there you go, being rude again.” Nero crossed his arms. “Also, kind of stupid. Because that big tube my friend over there is holding is a giant-ass rocket launcher, and if you think you can shoot me and get safely out the door before she blows you sky-high… Well, let’s just say you’re _really_ bad at math.”

The girl chewed her lip as she glanced between Nero and Lady, who propped Kalina Ann on her shoulder and waved with her free hand, smiling all the while. Nero could see the girl’s hands were beginning to tremble, whether from fear, cold, or the strain of holding the heavy revolver with fully-extended arms, and he knew he needed to deescalate the situation before someone actually _did_ get shot. “Look, we just wanna talk, okay? Why don’t you put the gun down and—”

He hadn’t counted on Nico doing… exactly what he should have expected Nico to do, now that he thought about it. “So there you are, you thievin’ little beyotch!” she snapped, slamming the van door. She stomped past Lady, taking a straight path toward their frightened quarry. Nero realized what was going to happen the moment Nico blocked the line of sight between the girl and Lady, and he barely had time to duck to one side as a .45 round whizzed past his ear. The girl bolted through the gap he’d left and somehow navigated the corner to vanish down a narrow alley piled with old crates and debris. Nero swore as he scrambled after her; around such tight corners, even his Devil Bringer was of no use.

Nero heard Nico’s boots stumbling along some distance behind him, and hoped Lady had gone around the outside to cut the girl off. That question was answered when he heard several more shots echoing down the alley, and he put on an extra burst of speed, taking the next corner by leaping into the air and running a few strides along the opposite wall rather than lose time slowing down for the turn. After two more turns he burst out into the remains of a loading dock. Lady stood at the far end of the open area with Kalina Ann braced on her shoulder, ready to fire. “Put the gun down,” she ordered, her voice carrying across the concrete pad. “Believe me, I don’t want to have to use this.”

The girl was pressed up against the opposite wall, her face pale. Empty shells lay at her feet, and she was fumbling rounds from her sweatshirt pocket into the cylinder. “Just let me go,” she called.

Nero had Blue Rose in his hand, but made sure it was clearly pointed at the ground before he moved forward. “Look, kid, there’s no denying you got guts. But you’re outnumbered and outgunned. There’s really only one option for you here.”

A single round escaped the girl’s trembling fingers and rolled across the ground, and Nero caught a familiar flash of red within the brass. He squinted at it, trying to be sure of what he’d seen, and the girl used his momentary distraction to snap the revolver up toward him. “Let me go,” she said again. “I will shoot.”

Nero’s eyes flicked from the shell on the ground to the flap of the cardboard box he could just see sticking out of her sweatshirt pocket. He held up his free hand. “Don’t,” he said. “Really, I mean it, don’t. Those rounds you just loaded—”

“Shut up!” Her eyes, wide and panicked, flashed toward Lady and then back to Nero. She eased a step away from him. “Stay back, or I shoot!”

“Listen to me.” Nero spoke slowly and clearly. “I know you took that box from our van. Those aren’t normal .45s.” He showed Blue Rose, still aimed at the pavement. “They’re special rounds for this gun. They’re too powerful for a normal revolver.” He eyed the distance between them, trying to calculate whether he could use his devil arm to snatch the pistol out of her hand before she could pull the trigger. He didn’t think she’d cocked it before firing at him before; that meant it was a double-action model, so the trigger pull would be a fraction of a second slower, but it was still risky…

Nero had been so focused on the girl that he hadn’t paid attention to the approaching footsteps until Nico stumbled out of the alley behind him, panting for breath. At the sudden movement in her peripheral vision, the startled girl twisted and jerked the trigger. Nero reacted as quickly as she did, slamming Nico back out of danger with his spectral hand, but he knew there was no chance of getting to the gun itself before—

The sound of the explosion was terrible, the powder detonation compounded by the crack of splitting metal, but the agonized scream that followed was even worse. Nero bolted forward to where the girl had fallen to her knees, bent over her mutilated hands. He kicked aside the remains of the revolver, its barrel split into strips and its cylinder unseated, and knelt beside her. “Let me see.” She recoiled as he reached for her, and he seized her wrists firmly. “Let me _see_.”

Lady was beside him seconds later, producing a roll of cotton gauze from one of the pouches in her belt. “How bad is it? I have tourniquet strapping if we need it.”

Blood covered both of the girl’s hands, but it was seeping, not under pressure. “I don’t think she’ll need a tourniquet. Stitches, definitely. And the flash burns are pretty bad, too. Nico!”

Nico staggered out of the alley, favoring a skinned knee and looking a little the worse for wear after Nero had launched her backwards. She stared at the wounded teenager, still a little dazed. “Yeah?”

“Go get the van.” Nero jerked his head toward the lane that led to the loading dock. “You should be able to drive it around there.”

Satisfied that the damage wasn’t immediately life-threatening, Lady bandaged the wounds tightly enough to slow the bleeding. As she worked, the girl’s violent trembling gradually gave way to a cold, pale stillness, her eyes vacant and dilated. Nero stripped off his jacket to wrap around her. “Hey, stay with us.”

“She’s going into shock.” Lady glanced around. “Is there a phone anywhere? She needs an ambulance.”

“Just the one in the van. It’ll be faster to drive her to the hospital ourselves.” Nero hooked his hands beneath the girl’s arms and half-lifted her from her kneeling position. “Get her legs free. I’ll carry her.”

The van arrived a minute later, and Nero scooped the slender teenager into his arms. She sagged in his grasp as though she were merely one of his own kids, fallen asleep—and, he noted absently, she didn’t weigh much more. Lady opened the van’s side door, and Nero deposited the girl on the long cushioned seat. “Nico, hospital. Step on it.”

“Figures she’d be the one to bleed all over my nice freshly-detailed van,” Nico growled, barely waiting for Lady to close the passenger door behind her before throwing the vehicle into a three-point turn. “What the hell happened back there, anyway?”

“Remember that overpressure ammo that went missing?” Nero braced the girl’s body to keep her from rolling off the seat as the van took a hard corner. “She put it through that old revolver she was using.”

“Shit.” Nico laid on the horn and blew through an intersection. “She’s lucky it didn’t take her face off, too.”

“Yeah.” Nero’s eyes landed on the bandages. Blood was beginning to soak through the layers of cotton gauze. “Lucky.”

“She’ll be okay.” Lady twisted to look back between the seats. “She’s not going to bleed out from those wounds. We’ll make it in plenty of time.” She gazed at the girl for a moment, then let out a weak laugh. “You know, after all this, we still didn’t get any answers.”

“Yeah, you’re right. But I guess there’s one little scrap of silver lining.” Nero flashed a humorless smile. “One way or another, we’ve eliminated the competition.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bit about the wounds from Devil Arms being harder for demons to heal is my justification for why the game’s protagonists can recover fully while in DT, but some of the boss demons don’t (e.g. Beowulf, who has a permanent scar from fighting Sparda and wanted revenge for his lost eye).


	31. Chapter 31

Nero was slumped in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the hospital’s waiting area when Kyrie found him. He blinked up at her. “Hey, you got here fast.”

“I left the house as soon as Lady called. Trish is staying with the boys.” Nero’s chair was at the end of a row, sandwiched between a heavily pregnant woman and a potted tree, so Kyrie knelt on the floor in front of him and took his hands. “Are you all right?”

“Me? I’m fine. We’re all fine, except that girl.” Nero leaned forward and laced his fingers with hers. “Well, Nico’s got a couple scrapes that she won’t shut up about, but she’ll be fine after a couple aspirin. Or a stiff drink.” He let his head sag. “Or maybe it’s me that needs the drink.”

Kyrie tipped her forehead to rest against his. “It wasn’t your fault, Nero. Lady told me you tried to warn her.”

“Maybe. But I can’t help feeling like I should have handled this whole situation better. I still don’t even know this kid’s name, and now maybe she’s scarred for life.”

“She made a lot of choices that led her to this point.” Kyrie’s voice was soothing. “She chose to steal the bullets, she chose to run and fight instead of talking, and she chose not to listen to your warnings. It’s tragic that she was injured, but you can’t bear all the blame yourself.”

The nurse at the admissions desk called a name, and the pregnant woman beside Nero stood and waddled through the door to the examination rooms. Kyrie slipped into the vacated seat. “Have they told you anything yet?”

Nero shook his head. “They took her back for treatment right away, but she’s only been in there for about half an hour. The nurse asked me to stick around so they could get some more information, but…” He gestured to the waiting room, packed with dull-eyed patients waiting their turn. Most had been there since before Nero had arrived. “Fortuna’s five-star health care in action. They haven’t even asked me to sign the firearm injury report yet.”

“Sister Benedicta told me once that the Order provided more than half the hospital’s annual operating budget. Once the disaster relief funding ran out, they had to let a lot of the senior medical staff go.” Kyrie glanced at the admissions desk and stood. “Let me see what I can do.”

She returned a few minutes later with a clipboard and pen. “That nurse is the only one handling check-in for the entire emergency department, poor thing. But she gave me the papers they need filled out.” She sat beside Nero and frowned. “Oh, dear, I don’t know any of this.”

Nero leaned over and scanned the form. “Patient’s name, home address, personal physician… Yeah, that’s gonna be a problem.”

“Did she have any identification?”

“I didn’t search her, but I doubt it. No bag, no obvious wallet. Just a beat-up revolver and some spare rounds in her pockets.”

“Well, I’m sure they have some protocol for admitting unknown patients. They have to be able to help accident victims, after all.” She ran a finger down the page. “Age. How old did you say she looked?”

“Sixteen, maybe seventeen. It’s hard to tell; she’s pretty petite. Could be eighteen and underfed, I guess.”

“But she’s probably a minor.” Kyrie hooked her lower lip with her teeth. “How likely is it that she has a legal guardian?”

Nero gave her a cautious look. “Not very, given that squatter’s nest we found. What are you thinking?”

“That if she doesn’t have anyone to claim her, she could be released into the care of the orphanage.”

“Right. Because the orphanage needs more kids. Especially ones who go around stealing guns and shooting at people.” Nero rotated in his seat to stare at her. “And don’t forget that she’s most likely the one who summoned a horde of demons in the orphanage’s back yard.”

“I know.” Kyrie sighed. “I was just trying to think of some place she could go that wasn’t a detention cell. She’ll need time to recover from her injuries.”

“Maybe a cell is what she needs, if she’s in this much trouble. It would give her time to think about her life choices and where they’ll land her.”

“Maybe she wouldn’t be in this much trouble if she’d had somewhere to go in the first place.”

There was no arguing with that; Nero knew his own life could have turned out very differently without Sister Benedicta’s discipline, Credo’s mentoring, and Kyrie’s unfailing affection. Given his rough personality and violent occupation, he knew many people _still_ thought him a borderline case. “I think you should talk it over with Sister Benedicta, at least.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do anything without her approval. I was just trying to plan.”

Nero could see the gears turning in Kyrie’s head. “She’s _not_ coming home with us. I don’t want her anywhere near—”

“I wouldn’t think of putting her under the same roof as our children,” Kyrie assured him.

“I was going to say ‘my gun,’ but that, too.” He grinned and ducked as she swatted at him with the clipboard. “What? You know how attached I am to Blue Rose.”

“I know. You have three great loves in your life, and two of them are made of steel.” Kyrie shot him a look. “Given my lack of demon-killing power, I suppose I should just be grateful to have made the top three.”

“You are at the very top of the list,” he assured her. “A whole line item above Red Queen.”

“What a relief.” Kyrie glanced over his shoulder as though she expected to see the sword on his back. “Speaking of which, where is she?”

“Out in the van with Nico and Lady. After what happened last time, we didn’t want to leave that much firepower sitting unattended in a parking lot.”

“That’s probably for the best.” Kyrie sighed as she looked over the clipboard again. “Look, why don’t you three head home? Lady told me everything that happened, and I can fail to answer these questions as well as you can.”

Nero frowned. “But as slow as this place is running, you could be here for hours yet. That time Carlo sprained his wrist, we were here until four in the morning.”

“That’s why I’m suggesting you go. Whenever the Nilepoch returns, you need to be ready for it. I don’t want you going into a fight tired and unprepared because you had to spend twelve hours in a plastic chair.” She smiled. “The most strenuous thing I have on my agenda for tomorrow is cooking, and I can do that in my sleep.”

“You won’t have to,” Nero assured her. “I can boil water too, you know.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “You sure you want to stay? Because I was already planning on it, so if you’d rather be home…”

“Nero, it’s fine,” she insisted. “Really. I don’t mind, and I know you’d be climbing the walls within an hour. If they ask me anything about what happened that I can’t answer, I’ll just call home. And this way, if I need to make any special arrangements for the girl, I’ll already be here.”

Nero wasn’t sure he liked the sound of “special arrangements,” but he knew better than to stand in the way of Kyrie’s charity. “All right. I’ll see you at home, whenever you get out of here.”

“I’ll call if I’m going to be late,” she promised.

* * *

Kyrie was, indeed, late.

She called several hours later to say that she would miss dinner, then called back an hour after that to say that there were complications and she didn’t know _when_ she’d be home. “The girl is being very evasive,” she sighed. Nero heard the frustration seeping into her voice. “She won’t even give us her full name.”

“Did she give you any name at all?”

“She says her name is Gigi, but I don’t exactly believe her. Gigi is usually a French name, unless it’s short for something, but she has a definite Italian accent.”

“She could have had a French parent, but grown up in Italy,” Nero offered. “Or her folks could have just picked a name they liked.”

“True. But she also won’t give a home address or her parents’ names. She claims she’s eighteen, but she had the same look on her face when she said that as when she told us her name, so I think she’s probably younger.”

“Has she said anything about what she was doing, or why she was summoning demons?”

“Not a word. Right now the hospital staff are just trying to figure out what to do with her. They can’t turn her over to the authorities as an unattended minor unless she admits that she’s under eighteen. They can’t release her from the hospital until someone agrees to be responsible for her, since she can’t care for herself until her hands heal. She has no proof of residency, so they can’t provide ongoing medical treatment, beyond the basic first aid they’re legally required to give, unless someone steps up to cover the cost of her hospital stay. I spoke to a constable, who said the police can’t take action on any firearm-related charges or the theft and vandalism without official statements from you and Nico. If you want to press charges for any of the crimes she’s committed, you can, but they can’t proceed with booking until she’s able to be taken into custody, and that goes back to someone being medically responsible for her. Which is beyond their purview.” Kyrie sighed. “As long as she refuses to identify herself, there’s really nothing anyone can do.”

“Which ties our hands, too. Even if we wanted to question her ourselves, we don’t have the time to take care of her, and we certainly can’t pay for her medical bills. Especially given how much she’s already cost us in repairs to the van,” Nero added under his breath. “Anyway, it sounds like there’s nothing more you can do there.”

“I’m afraid I can’t come home just yet. I’m on babysitting duty.”

Nero stared at the receiver for a few seconds before placing it back against his ear. Nico had disconnected the wiretap when they’d returned home, so the sound was clearer than it had been, but he still doubted he’d heard correctly. “Did you just say _babysitting_?”

“You can call it guard duty, if you prefer. One of the nurses caught our young friend trying to sneak out a fire exit after the constable left. She was attempting to disconnect the alarm. Fortunately for us, she couldn’t quite manage it with her hands bandaged, but it means she can’t be left unsupervised. The ward supervisor is trying to arrange for a volunteer to come in and keep an eye on her overnight, but until they find someone, I’m sitting in the ward to make sure she doesn’t do anything foolish.” Kyrie’s breath huffed across the mouthpiece. “Well. Anything more foolish than she already has done.”

Those were strong words coming from Kyrie, and Nero wondered how much of a pain the girl had made herself throughout the day. “Can’t they just lock her in?”

“The ward doors don’t lock. It would violate fire code. Besides, there are windows, and I wouldn’t put it past her to try to climb out of one, even from the second floor.” Kyrie’s voice went faint for a few seconds as she turned away from the receiver. “Oh, the nurse who was covering for me is waving; I’d better go. I’ll be home when I can, but it will probably be late. Don’t wait up.”

“All right.” Nero didn’t like any of this, but he didn’t know what else to suggest. If they lost track of the girl now, they’d likely never find her again. “Make sure they feed you, okay?”

“I’ll be fine. Tell the children I’ll see them at breakfast.”

“Will do. Love you.”

“I love you, too. Good night.” The connection cut off, and Nero sighed as he replaced the receiver. He didn’t enjoy sleeping apart from Kyrie, though he was resigned to the occasional lonely night when it was made necessary by his work or her duties at the orphanage. _This_ lost night, however, he resented. There was no reason that Kyrie, who worked harder and was spread thinner than anyone he knew, should have to give up her precious hours of sleep to watch over a delinquent teenager who seemed determined to interfere with every part of Nero’s life and livelihood. If it were left up to him, he’d just handcuff the girl to a piece of furniture and leave her to work out how to get an entire bedframe down the fire escape.

The children were piled in the living room, absorbed in various homework or play activities when he joined them. Nico had gone home after dinner, but Lady was seated on the couch with Flavia perched in her lap, practically purring as her copper hair was brushed. Scipio, Kyle and Rosso had the art supply box spread out between them on the floor; Scipio and Kyle were coloring, while Rosso navigated a complicated maze he’d found in one of the puzzle books. Julio frowned at a math problem, while beside him, Zaffiro was deeply ensconced in a hardback book. Only Carlo was missing, which meant he was the one Nero had heard splashing in the bath.

It was so quiet and peaceful, Nero hated to break the silence to tell them about Kyrie. He perched on the arm of the couch beside Zaffiro and glanced down at the dense book in his lap. “Whatcha reading?” he asked quietly.

Zaffiro lifted the book to show him the cover, and Nero’s eyebrows rose. “Wow. Jules Verne, huh? I thought you’d finished all our books. Where’d you find that one?”

“Julio got it for me.” Zaffiro’s eyes returned to the page, skimming the text with almost supernatural speed—which, Nero realized, it might well be.

Nero’s questioning gaze shifted to Julio, who had looked up at the mention of his name. “School library,” he answered the unspoken question. “Since he stays home all day, I thought he might want something longer to read.”

“That was thoughtful of you.” Julio beamed at Nero’s praise. “Have you read this one?”

Julio nodded. “I liked it a lot. Mr. Bellini says Jules Verne wrote a whole bunch of books, but the library only has two of them.”

“Huh.” Nero’s eyes shifted over one place on the couch. “I bet Lady can find them somewhere on the mainland.”

“Jules Verne? Oh, definitely. His works are in the public domain, so they’re pretty easy to source.” She looked up from Flavia’s hair, which she was now twisting into a French braid. “Have you ever read any H. G. Wells?”

Julio shook his head. “What did he write?”

“A lot of early science fiction. Time travel, space aliens, that sort of thing, but written around the same time as Verne. I’ll look for some of his books next time I’m back home.”

“That would be great! Thanks!” Julio tapped his pencil against his math homework. “I wish we had a real library here. Mr. Bellini said there used to be one as big as our whole _school_ in the city center.”

“Yeah, I remember going there when I was a kid. It was a nice place, big domed roof and everything. It got destroyed in the, uh, earthquake.” Nero had seen the damage firsthand. Part of a hellgate had fallen on the building, collapsing the beautiful dome, and flooding from broken water lines had destroyed the stacks. By the time cleanup efforts had been organized, standing water and black mold had ensured that there was nothing left to salvage.

Mention of the disaster had dampened the comfortable mood, and Lady changed the subject. “So what did Kyrie have to say? I assume that was her on the phone.”

“She’s staying late with our friend Gigi at the hospital.” At that, two of the heads on the couch twisted sharply toward Nero.

“Easy there, Little Miss.” Lady gently turned Flavia’s head to face forward again and resumed the braid. “You almost took my fingers off, whipping around like that. Hold still; I’m almost finished.”

Julio’s concern was more predictable; _hospital_ had been a trigger word for him ever since his father’s death. “But Kyrie’s just visiting someone, right?”

“Right. This girl got hurt today and needed someone to look after her, so Kyrie volunteered.”

Carlo, damp-haired and clad in pajamas, had rejoined the group while Nero was speaking. “Kyrie’s not coming back tonight?”

“Don’t worry; she’ll be back by morning.” Nero glanced around at the rest of the children. Only Scipio seemed to be following their conversation closely. “She said to tell you all good night, and she’ll see you at breakfast.”

Lady tied off Flavia’s braid with an elastic band. “Gigi, huh?”

“Yeah. That’s what she said.” Nero expressed his own disbelief with a movement of his eyebrows. “Nothing else to report.”

Lady took his meaning and nodded. “Well, if Kyrie’s not here, I guess that means I’m on tucking-in duty, right?” She tickled Flavia’s ribs lightly, and the little girl squirmed and laughed in her lap. “It’s almost time for bed, Little Miss. Why don’t you go get your jammies on?”

Flavia twisted around, her brow crinkled in the expression that appeared whenever she encountered a novel word. “Jammies?”

“It’s a fun way of saying pajamas.”

“Jammies,” Flavia repeated as she jumped down. “Pajamas. Jammies.” With this new item fixed in her vocabulary, she trotted off to the bedroom.

“Hey, now that Carlo’s out of the bath, some of you could be brushing your teeth,” Nero said to the room at large. “We’ve got ten people to cycle through one sink.” Nobody moved, and Nero decided to run youngest to oldest. “Kyle, Scipio, you go first.”

The boys reluctantly abandoned their activity books and left the room, and Nero did a quick head count. “Wait a minute, there should be seven people here. Who’s missing?”

Lady looked around. “Besides Kyrie?”

“She’s number eleven.” Nero blinked. “Trish! Where’s Trish?”

“Oh, right. I didn’t know you were counting her. She went out for dessert.”

“Dessert?”

“Pie, I suspect.” Lady gave him a look. “You know, the thin kind that comes pre-sliced.”

Nero sighed. Trish hadn’t seemed as enamored of Nero’s thrown-together spaghetti Bolognese as she had been with Kyrie’s lasagna, so it came as little surprise that she’d gone out in search of pizza. “I guess she…” He trailed off as something occurred to him, and consciously bit back an expletive. “I’m an idiot.”

Lady’s eyebrows arched. “I’m not commenting either way until I know what prompted that thought.”

Nero stood and beckoned her to follow him into the hall, lowering his voice so the children wouldn’t hear. “Gigi tried to break out of the hospital earlier. The police won’t take her into custody as long as she’s injured, which is why someone has to sit up all night in the ward to keep her from trying to run again. But the hospital couldn’t find anyone on short notice. That’s why Kyrie’s stuck there overnight. I didn’t even think of Trish.”

“You’re right; that’s the perfect job for her. She doesn’t need sleep, and she could even keep her feet up the whole time.”

“And eat all the pizza she wants. That place even delivers to the hospital.” Nero glanced toward the front door. “I don’t suppose you know where she’s likely to have holed up?”

Lady shook her head. “I’d say lurking on someone’s roof, but I suspect that’s too much jumping for her leg right now. She was moving pretty slowly. She might just be parked on a bench somewhere.”

“Damn. If I could find her, I could have her relieve Kyrie early enough that she could still get a decent night’s sleep.” Nero sighed. “I guess we’ll have to wait until she comes back on her own. If she even comes back tonight.”

“Even if she doesn’t, it’s just one night. Kyrie said she’d be back by morning, and we know Trish won’t miss breakfast. We’ll sort it out then.” She stood aside as Carlo and Kyle emerged from the bathroom. “Meanwhile, I’m inclined to hit the hay early, myself. It’s been a long day, and I have a feeling we’re going to need to stockpile as much sleep as we can. It’s only a matter of time until things here dial up to our usual level of excitement.”

It was, of course, only a figure of speech. But long after that night was over, when the screams and sobs no longer rang fresh in his ears, Nero would reflect on Lady’s words and wonder if they had been prophetic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Yes, getting the bedframe down the fire escape was a Goodbye Piccadilly reference. I couldn’t resist.)
> 
> This chapter was pretty light because the next couple chapters are a bit more… intense. You’ve been warned.


	32. Chapter 32

In the early hours of the morning, Nero was sunk deep in sleep, his mind immersed in a nonsensical vision. His dream-self wandered Fortuna as the island had once, and yet never, been: He drifted through quaint streets lined with neat shops, past rustic cottages with pristine hedges in their gardens, and then a magnificent domed library was rising up before him. From within the structure he heard Kyrie’s sweet voice, canting a familiar hymn. As he stepped through the doors the music wrapped around him, and at once he was inside the opera house, frozen in place as a blood-soaked assassin turned from his victim to survey the crowd. Hooded figures parted before him. Running. Screaming.

Nero wrenched away from the distorted memory, willing himself awake. His eyes burned with fatigue, but he forced them open, blinking in the darkness to clear the unsettling dream from his mind.

It took a few seconds for him to realize that the screams hadn’t stopped.

Nero flung back the bedclothes and ran for the stairs, relying more on instinct than sight to navigate them in the darkness. There was light in the downstairs hallway, spilling out from the larger bedroom along with the sounds of horror. Nero’s shoulder glanced off the doorframe as he swung into the room, but he scarcely noticed the pain.

Lady had arrived before him, and was on her knees between the two nearest bunks, reaching for one of the twins. Her lips were moving, but he couldn’t hear anything but the two raw, panicked voices filling the room. Rosso was huddled in the corner at the back of his bed, just out of Lady’s reach, face bloodless and frozen in an expression of abject terror. Half of the screams were his.

The other half came from the neighboring bunk, where Zaffiro was pressed back against the wall, his eyes glazed and unseeing even as they streamed tears. Julio crouched beside the bed, shaking the younger boy gently by the shoulders, but Zaffiro didn’t seem to notice. His voice was already growing hoarse with screaming, and as he sank deeper into shock it faded away, leaving Rosso’s panicked shrieks the only sound in the room.

Julio twisted to look at Nero as he knelt beside them. “He won’t wake up,” the older boy cried. His own eyes were brimming with frightened tears. “I thought he was having a bad dream, but he won’t wake up…”

“It’s okay. I’ve got him.” Nero gathered Zaffiro into his arms. The small body was cold against his skin. “Bring the blanket.” As Julio untucked the bedspread, Rosso’s wails subsided into heaving sobs, and Nero looked over to see Lady wrapped around Rosso’s quaking figure as well as she could manage on the cramped lower bunk. “Living room,” he told her, and twisted to let Julio squeeze past him. “Go ahead of us, Julio. Switch on the lights.”

Flavia was peering out of the door to her room when he passed, frightened by the strange sounds and nighttime disturbance just as the younger boys had been petrified in their own beds, but Nero couldn’t spare them any attention just now. He sat on the couch, Zaffiro still motionless in his lap, and took the blanket from Julio. “Get the others back in bed. Tell them the twins just had a bad nightmare, and to go back to sleep. Everything’s fine.”

Julio hesitated. “But…”

“ _Go,_ ” Nero ordered. “I can’t have them coming in here. Come back when they’re all down.”

Lady had somehow managed to wrangle Rosso out of his corner, and she carried him to the couch in an awkward tangle of limbs. At least he seemed more responsive than his brother as he clung to her, sobbing into her shoulder and calling for his mother. She kept her arms locked around him as she settled opposite Nero, looking like she herself might dissolve into tears at any moment. “What is happening?”

Rosso called for his mother again, and Nero froze. “Shit. _Shit._ Their memories.”

“Oh, no,” Lady breathed. “Trish said they were eight when it happened.”

“I should have known this was coming.” Nero struggled to tuck the blanket around Zaffiro with his free hand. “All along, they’ve been getting their memories back through dreams. I didn’t even think about them having to relive _that_.” He clutched the chilled body tighter against his chest. Zaffiro didn’t react to the pressure.

Lady rubbed Rosso’s back and rocked him gently from side to side. “Hush,” she whispered. “You’re safe now. It’s just a bad dream.” Rosso’s heaving breaths gradually slowed, and Lady fixed her eyes on Nero, her meaning clear. “It’s just a dream.”

“Not when it sends him into shock, it isn’t,” Nero hissed. “He’s freezing, and he still hasn’t come out of it. It’s like his body’s shutting down along with his mind.”

Lady would have replied, but Julio returned then, still drenched in anxiety. “They’re back in bed, but I don’t know if they’ll sleep.”

Nero hadn’t really expected them to, but as long as they stayed out of the room, he could manage. “Good enough. You know where the hot water bottle is?”

“Under the bathroom sink.”

“Okay, listen carefully: Go fill the kettle with water, put it on the stove to heat, then get a towel and the hot water bottle from the bathroom. As soon as the water’s hot, use the tongs to hold the bottle over the sink—”

Julio nodded. “I’ve seen Kyrie do it. I know how.”

“Good. _Do not_ burn yourself. Once it’s all sealed up, wrap it in the towel and bring it here.”

The boy hurried off again, and Lady rearranged Rosso on her lap. He was sniffling now, but no longer sobbing. “I’m not saying it wasn’t traumatic and frightening,” she told Nero, her voice low and artificially even. “Clearly it was. But for _them_ , at this moment in time, it’s just a bad dream. That distance means _everything_ right now.”

Nero knew she was right; the memories the twins had regained were, after all, just memories, and presumably their horror would dull with time. But in order for Zaffiro to realize he hadn’t just lived through… well, whatever it was he’d actually recalled in his dream, he had to be functioning normally. And right now, the fact that he _wasn_ _’t_ was really beginning to worry Nero. “Okay, so we know whatever happened to them back then was really bad. Probably worse than the dream of it they just had. But even though it was awful, they came through it okay. So I shouldn’t be worried that he’s not out of this yet, right? Because if he survived it then, he should survive it now.”

Lady’s face softened. “In theory. I mean, he did just get a lot of trauma inserted into his memory all at once. Maybe it just… overloaded his brain.”

Nero swallowed. “This isn’t making me feel better.”

“Indestructible, remember?”

“Also maybe a little bat-shit crazy. He _did_ turn himself into Urizen.”

“That’s not a subject for young ears.” Lady stroked Rosso’s hair and angled her head to look down at him. “Hey, there. Can you try taking some big, deep breaths with me?” She demonstrated, and after some prompting, Rosso joined her. “Good. Isn’t that better?”

“I want my mother,” Rosso whimpered.

Nero saw the flash of pain in Lady’s eyes that spoke of more than ordinary sympathy, but her voice remained steady. “I’m afraid you’ll just have to settle for me. How are you feeling now? Can you tell me?”

Rosso sniffed before whispering, “Scared.”

Lady rubbed his back. “What are you scared of? Do you want to tell me about your dream? Maybe talking about it will help.”

Rosso curled a little tighter. “The house was on fire.”

Lady glanced up at Nero, who shrugged. He hadn’t heard this story, either. “That must have been very scary.”

“Mother left me,” he whispered. “She said I had to run and hide, and she left. And then she…” He began to cry again. “She screamed and screamed and… I was alone…”

Lady resumed rocking the boy as he dissolved into a fresh round of sobs. “You’re safe now,” she repeated. “You’re not alone. We’re here with you.”

Julio returned with the hot water bottle and gave Rosso a curious look, but said nothing. Nero tucked the warm bundle against Zaffiro’s stomach and wrapped the blanket around him more tightly. “Thanks,” Nero told Julio. “You’ve been a big help.”

Julio shrugged off his appreciation. “Are they better now?”

Nero wasn’t sure how to answer that. “They will be,” he tried, willing himself to believe it. “But I don’t think there’s anything else you can do here. You might as well go back to bed, too. School tomorrow.”

The look Julio gave him plainly said that school was the last thing on his mind. “Those weren’t ordinary nightmares, were they?”

Nero sighed and let his chin rest atop Zaffiro’s head. The adrenaline was fading, leaving him shaken and exhausted. “I’m sorry, Julio. I really can’t tell you this time.”

The boy nodded, disappointed but accepting. “Okay. If you need any more help, I’ll probably still be awake.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re not the only one. I’ll leave the other kids to you, okay?”

“Sure.” With a last look at the twins, Julio retreated down the hall.

Nero rubbed Zaffiro’s arms through the blanket. The heat of the water bottle and Nero’s own body were beginning to bring blood back into his limbs, but the boy still hadn’t spoken or even cried since that first terrified outburst in the bedroom. “Come on, kid, come back to us,” Nero whispered. “We’re here for you, but you gotta let us help.”

Rosso surfaced from his own misery to look over at his twin. A new layer of fear overlaid the shadows on his face. “Brother…” He lifted tear-drenched eyes to Nero. “Is he okay?”

“He had a bad dream, same as you.” Nero slipped his fingers beneath Zaffiro’s jaw to feel for his pulse. It fluttered against his fingertips, fast but weak. “He’s just having a real hard time getting over it.”

Rosso squirmed free of Lady’s hold and crawled across the couch to insinuate himself within the circle of Nero’s arms. He pressed his head against his brother’s chest and hugged him tightly. After a minute, Zaffiro’s erratic breathing began to even out.

Nero pulled the blanket around both of them. “You’re safe now,” he echoed Lady’s words. “Whatever happens, you’re not alone. I’m here. I’ll protect you.”

Soon Rosso’s eyelids began to droop, and it wasn’t long before he sank back into an uneasy sleep. But while Zaffiro’s body eventually relaxed, his eyes remained wide and vacant.

* * *

Nero woke to the brush of a gentle hand over his face. He squinted against the glare of the early sun that slanted through the front window and peered up at Kyrie. “Hey. Welcome back.”

She moved her hand from Nero’s forehead back over his hair and looked down at the boys in his arms with concern. “What happened? Why are you all out here?”

Nero peered down at the twins. Rosso was slumped against his chest, sound asleep. At first Zaffiro appeared to have dozed off, but as Nero stirred, he jerked back to full wakefulness, eyes darting around in alarm. “The kids had bad dreams,” Nero temporized. “I’ll tell you the rest later.” He tried to move and hissed in discomfort. “Crap. Both my legs are completely asleep.”

“Here.” Kyrie moved around the couch and bent to scoop Rosso into her arms. He writhed a little and whimpered in his sleep, but didn’t wake. “You can bring Zaffiro once you can walk.”

Lady had disappeared from the couch some time during the night, but she emerged from the room she shared with Flavia when she heard Kyrie’s voice. “Morning,” Nero heard her say quietly. “You missed quite an ordeal.”

“So it seems. I’ll meet you in the kitchen after I put Rosso to bed.”

After a pause to to let blood flow resume to his lower extremities, Nero eased forward, wincing at the pins and needles it stirred in his legs, and gathered Zaffiro in his arms. The boy curled a little tighter against his chest as he was lifted, and Nero made sure to scoop up the blanket they’d taken from his bed. “Time to go back to bed, kiddo. You feeling any better now?”

Zaffiro said nothing.

He heard Kyrie tinkering in the kitchen as he passed, and by the time he’d deposited Zaffiro in his bunk and covered him with the blanket, the welcome aroma of coffee had begun to spread through the house. From his top bunk, Julio stirred and lifted his head to squint at Nero. “You need help?” the boy mumbled.

“Nope, all good,” Nero whispered back. “You still have an hour before you need to get up. You can go back to sleep.”

Julio flopped back into his pillow, and Nero crept out, closing the bedroom door behind him. Nero envied him the extra sleep. He’d dozed on and off for a couple of hours, but his cramped position on the couch had been far from restful.

In the kitchen, Kyrie was just pouring the coffee. “Do you want something to eat?” she asked as Nero joined them.

He shook his head. “I’ll have something when I feed the kids later. How are you holding up? You get any sleep?”

“None at all. I’m still awake, but not for long.” Kyrie smothered a yawn behind her hand. “But before I turn in, tell me what on earth happened here. Is everyone all right?”

“Yes, and no.” In between sips of coffee, Nero briefly summarized the night’s events, though he skirted around the cause of the twins’ nightmares. “Rosso is definitely handling it better than Zaffiro, but I think we’re going to have to keep a close eye on both of them.”

“The other kids were pretty upset, too,” Lady added. “Flavia was still awake when I went back to the room at four.”

“From the looks of things, I don’t think Julio slept much, either.” Nero drained the last of his coffee. “I think it’s going to take everyone a couple of days to recuperate.”

“Poor boys.” Kyrie glanced in the direction of the bedroom, as though she could peer through the walls to watch over them. “I wonder what sort of memory could have frightened them both so badly.”

Nero and Lady exchanged glances. “We know _what_ it was,” Nero said quietly. “Not all the details, but…”

Kyrie’s brow creased. “Can you tell me? Or is it something you think they wouldn’t want me to know?”

Nero deferred to Lady, who shrugged. “I don’t see why you shouldn’t. In fact given what happened last night, I think it’s best that you have at least an idea of what they’re going through.” She glanced toward the door and lowered her voice, just in case any of the other children were awake. “When Dante and Vergil were eight years old, their mother died.” She moistened her lips. “Well… she was murdered. By enemies of their father.”

“Murdered?” Kyrie gasped. “Oh, how awful.”

“We’re pretty sure they witnessed at least some of it,” Nero added. “Apparently demons overran the whole town, looking for them. Their mother wasn’t the only one who died. But whatever they saw that day—whatever they remembered last night—must have scarred them pretty deeply.”

“And just so you’re aware, they don’t talk about it. At all. I’ve known Dante for twenty-five years, and I only found out what really happened when Trish told us a few weeks ago. When Rosso described his dream last night, it was the first I’d ever heard him speak of it.” Lady glanced at Nero. “Did Zaffiro ever tell you anything?”

Nero shook his head. “He hasn’t said a word since it happened. I don’t even know if he really slept at all.”

“He was probably afraid to go back to sleep, after a nightmare like that.” Kyrie sighed. “Did Trish have any suggestions? Anything that would help them recover?”

“We haven’t had a chance to ask. She went out last night and hasn’t come back yet.”

“I’m sure she’ll be back for breakfast,” Lady said. “Mealtimes are basically the equivalent of a summoning circle where she’s concerned.”

Nero turned back to Kyrie. “Hey, speaking of summoning circles, tell us about Gigi.”

“There’s not much more to tell. Once she realized I was staying overnight to keep her from escaping, she went right to sleep. The hospital had found a nurse to replace me by sunrise, but I’m sure it’s going to be an ongoing issue.”

“We were thinking maybe Trish could stay with her at night, since she’s got nothing better to do until the Nilepoch shows up again.”

“Oh! That’s a thought. You don’t think Trish will mind?”

“Given the choice between Gigi or the rest of the kids, I think she’d be thrilled to have just one person to babysit. Especially if it includes pizza delivery.”

“Well, it sounds like a perfect solution to me.” Kyrie yawned again. “I’m not sure I can manage another all-night session any time soon.”

“Yeah, it sounds like you’re pretty well beat. Why don’t you go on up to bed?” Nero collected the empty mugs and carried them to the sink. “I’ll get the kids ready for school.”

“No, I promised I’d see them at breakfast.” Kyrie rubbed her eyes. “I want to make things seem as normal as possible, especially after the scare they had last night. I’ll rest after they’ve gone to school.”

“Fine, if you insist. But I’m cooking.” Nero crouched to retrieve a pan from the cupboard beside the oven.

“You don’t have to do that. You were up most of the night, too. Let me.” Kyrie stood and reached for the cookware.

Nero held it out of her reach. “At least I had a nap. You haven’t slept at all! Go put your feet up and let me do some work for a change.”

“All I did was sit in a chair all night. I’m perfectly capable of—”

“Girls, girls!” Lady’s voice cut in. “You’re both pretty. Now give me the pan.”

Kyrie and Nero blinked at her in confusion. “What?”

Lady rolled her eyes. “It sounds like I’m the only one of us who got _any_ sleep last night, and right now I trust myself to handle dangerously hot objects a lot more than I trust either of you. So _give_.” She reached up and yanked the pan out of Nero’s hand, then pointed to the kitchen table. “Both of you, sit.”

Kyrie’s mouth curved in a stubborn frown. “You’re our guest! You shouldn’t have to—”

“ _Sit_ ,” Lady repeated. “I’m twice your age and ten times as mean. Do not make me pull seniority on you.”

“I think you just did.” Nero’s eyes slid to Kyrie. “Hey, did I tell you I found out Lady’s old enough to be my mother?”

Lady’s eyes narrowed, and she spun the pan by the handle. “You want to start something at this hour of the morning?”

“No, ma’am.” Nero pulled out Kyrie’s chair for her while Lady moved to the sink to wash her hands. “You go right ahead and make breakfast.” He grinned. “ _Mom._ ”

Lady’s aim, as always, was excellent. The wet towel caught Nero right across the face.


	33. Chapter 33

Trish timed her return to the house to coincide precisely with the children finishing breakfast. She slipped between them as the mob jostled out of the kitchen to collect their school things, and immediately began piling whatever food remained on the stove and counter onto an empty plate. “Morning, all.”

“Nice of you to finally show up.” Lady flopped into one of the recently-vacated chairs. “By all means, help yourself to some breakfast.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Trish carried the heaping plate of food to the table and glanced around at its occupants. “You all look terrible. I thought humans were supposed to wake bright-eyed and refreshed in the morning.”

“That’s only after a good night’s sleep.” Nero slurped some lukewarm coffee from his mug. He’d lost count, but he thought it was his third cup of the morning. Unless it was his fourth. Whatever number it was, it wasn’t working. “Which exactly _none_ of us got. You missed all the fun.”

The group of kids passed on the way to the front door, and Kyrie pushed herself up from the table. “I’ll be right back. I just need to make sure the children have everything.”

Trish popped a chunk of melon into her mouth. “Something to do with that girl you finally caught yesterday?” she asked around it.

“That, too. Speaking of which, we’ve got a job for you, while you’re recuperating. But we’ll come back to that.”

“A job? How exciting.” Trish spread preserves over a slab of toast. “So what fun did I miss?”

Lady canted her head to listen, and didn’t answer until Kyrie was locking the front door behind the children. “Dante and Vergil recovered their memories of Eva’s death.”

Trish froze with the toast halfway to her mouth, then slowly replaced it on her plate. “I see.”

“Yeah. It was bad.” Nero propped his elbows on the table. Kyrie touched his shoulder in sympathy as she returned to her seat. “I don’t know how long it’s gonna take them to bounce back from that. Rosso was really scared and upset last night, but Lady got him calmed down, and he got back to sleep eventually. I think he’ll be okay, with time. But Zaffiro really has me worried. He went catatonic for a while, and he’s still not back to normal. He won’t talk, won’t eat or drink, and won’t sleep. I looked in on him again a little bit ago, and he’s still just lying there with his eyes open.”

Trish nodded slowly. “I can’t say I’m surprised, after what he experienced. It’s a wonder he came through it at all, especially on his own.”

They all stared at her. “You know what happened to him?” Lady asked after a moment of shocked silence.

“I told you I saw his memories.” Trish looked miserable. “Mundus reveled in the suffering he’d caused. It was one of his favorite ways to torment Vergil, drawing those images out of his mind and forcing him to relive them.”

“What happened to him?” Nero demanded. “Why was his reaction so much worse than Dante’s?”

“Because…” Trish looked away. “Vergil found her.”

“Found… her?” Nero’s stomach clenched. “You mean their mother?”

Trish nodded. “Vergil was away from home when Mundus’s army came to Red Grave. He managed to evade them and find his way back to the house, but when he ran inside, he…” She shuddered, looking very human for a moment, before pressing on. “There was a sea of blood covering the floor. He slipped in it, and fell amid… what was left of Eva.” She closed her eyes against the memory. “Mundus’s servants had torn her to pieces. A message for Sparda, should he return.”

Kyrie pressed a hand to her mouth as though she would be sick. Nero shared the feeling. “Did Dante see any of that?”

“I don’t know. Dante never speaks of it.” Trish tucked her arms across her chest. “He believed Vergil was dead too, so he must have left the house before Vergil arrived.”

“He said she told him to run,” Lady said quietly. She was looking a little queasy, as well. “Rosso, I mean. Last night, he told me his mother told him to run and hide. He heard her screaming, but perhaps he got away before… the rest.”

“Thank goodness for small mercies.” Kyrie’s voice was scarcely above a whisper. “It’s all so horrible. How could those poor children have endured that? It’s a miracle that they didn’t suffer serious psychological damage.”

“Are you sure they didn’t?” Lady lifted her gaze to meet Kyrie’s. “I mean, I’ve always chalked up their eccentricities to being half-devil, but…” She hesitated, and her eyes flicked to Nero.

“You can say it,” Nero sighed. “Vergil destroyed a city and caused the deaths of almost twelve thousand people last year. Those aren’t exactly the actions of a well-balanced, emotionally-stable individual.” He swirled the dregs of coffee in his mug. “Is it bad that I’m kinda relieved? I mean, at least he has a _reason_ for being a psychopath. It’s not, you know, hereditary madness or something.” He huffed a wry laugh. “I hope.”

A shadow of Trish’s usual sly smile crossed her face. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have that as an excuse?”

“Ha, ha.” Nero scowled, but the return to her normal teasing was something of a relief after the heavy conversation. He drained his coffee. “Look, I hate to break up this festive chat, but I’m about to officially declare it nap time. What do you say we all go to bed for a few hours, and reconvene for lunch? Excluding Trish, of course.”

Trish arched an eyebrow. “I hope you’re excluding me from sleep, and not lunch. And wasn’t there something you were going to ask me to do? Something about that girl?”

“We’ll talk about it at lunch,” Nero said through a yawn. “You’re on… well, everything-duty until then.”

* * *

It seemed Nero had only just closed his eyes when Lady shook him awake. “Sorry,” she murmured. Her own voice was rough with sleep. “Trish woke me first. The monitor’s been triggered.”

“Shit.” Nero rubbed grit from his eyes and carefully disentangled himself from Kyrie. They had fallen asleep holding each other close, both instinctively craving comfort after the traumatic revelations about Rosso and Zaffiro, but he didn’t want to wake her when she was so far behind on sleep. “Have you called Nico?” he whispered.

Lady nodded. “Already on her way over.”

“Go ahead and load up. I’ll meet you in the garage.” When Lady had gone, Nero dressed and quietly retrieved Blue Rose from the secure locker. The sight of the special ammunition in the safe summoned an image of Gigi and her mutilated hands to mind. Had that just been yesterday morning? So much had happened since then… His thoughts automatically tracked to the twins, and he wondered if Zaffiro were up to talking just yet. Then he shook his head at the juxtaposition. _I am leading one hell of a strange life_.

He paused to brush his teeth and splash water on his face, hoping to trick his body into believing he was fully awake, before heading for the garage. Trish was sprawled on the couch in the living room, reading a magazine. She waved without looking up. Nero paused at the door. “You staying here?”

She shrugged. “Rest still seems the best use of my time. It’s been ten minutes since the monitor tripped, and you still have to get there. I suspect that thing will be long gone by the time you arrive.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Nero glanced back down the hall. “Check on the kids while we’re gone, will you? Kyrie’s sleeping, and I’m still worried about Zaffiro.”

Trish’s fingers tightened almost imperceptibly on the magazine, but she nodded. “You’d better hurry. I heard Nico arrive a moment ago.”

In the garage, Nico was already behind the wheel, practically bouncing with impatience. “Let’s go, let’s go!” she shouted as Nero tossed Red Queen’s case into the vehicle.

“So go already!” Nero slammed the side door and held on as Nico took the corner and accelerated down the narrow street. When the van had stopped swaying, he inched forward far enough to converse with Lady, seated in the front passenger seat. “All right, so assuming this thing _isn_ _’t_ already long gone, what do we do when we get there? We need a plan.”

“We know that beam of light it shoots from its mouth is dangerous.” Lady raised her voice over the road noise. “And we can see when it’s preparing for an attack. So as long as we can maintain solid cover between it and us, we can most likely avoid dying.”

Nico tossed Lady an incredulous look. “You call that a plan?”

“No, I call that a recap,” Lady shot back. “The last time we encountered it, that girl Gigi said that bullets didn’t work against it. She was shooting .45s, but there’s a chance something with more kick could still damage it. So step one is to find good cover that will protect us from the beam attack. Step two is to hit it with Blue Rose and Kalina Ann, and see what happens. If the ranged attacks show results, we lay into it with everything we’ve got. We’ll stay close enough to cover that when it starts charging up for a counterattack, we can get to safety.”

“And what if step two fails?”

“Then we move on to step three, which is me distracting it with rockets and grenades while you get in close and see what Red Queen can do.”

“So step three is Lady turns you into demon chow,” Nico translated. “Great plan. Won’t work more than once, though.”

Nero glared at her. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Nico.”

“Any time. Oh, an’ if you wanna try somethin’ that actually might _work_ , I got some new toys for ya back there.” She took her eyes off the road for a quick glance back at him. “They’re just prototypes. One of each. No cash up front, since I still owe you for that warehouse thing, but don’t get used to it.”

Nero found a selection of new Devil Breakers swinging from the rack over the workbench. He unhooked one with tiny red marks scattered over the surface and slid his arm inside. It tingled as his flesh reformed and made contact with the metal. “What do these things do?”

“The red one is what I call the Flea Bite,” Nico called. “It’s like itchin’ powder for demons. Gets ‘em all discombobulated. Use it on a group, an’ they’ll just start bitin’ an’ scratchin’ at each other, ‘stead of attackin’ you. Stand back an’ watch ‘em tear each other apart.”

“Except there’s no group this time. It’s just the one Nilepoch.” Nero slid his arm out of the speckled Breaker and reached for the next model. “What about this yellow one?”

“That’s the Venomator!”

Nero rolled his eyes. “Catchy name.”

“Ain’t it? Made it from a piece o’ those stabby Qliphoth root things. Careful, it spits poison. Kills low-level demons dead within an hour. Don’t get any on you, though; it stings like hell.”

Nero sighed and set it aside. Something that took an hour to kill a weak demon wouldn’t be much use against the Nilepoch, either. The last Breaker on the rack sparkled and shimmered as it swung. “Let me guess,” he muttered. “This must be the Glitter Cannon. Gives demons a makeover so they feel like a princess.”

“Speak up,” Nico called. “I can’t hear ya back there.”

That was probably for the best. “What’s the one that looks like a disco ball?”

“You mean the _real_ pretty one? That’s the Quicksilver. It’s like Ragtime, only backwards.”

“I have no idea what the hell that means.” Nero unhooked it and tried it on. The metal had felt cold in his hand, but immediately settled close around his flesh as though he’d plunged his arm into warm plasma. It felt good. Energizing. “What’s it do?”

“Okay, you know how Ragtime messes with time an’ slows stuff down? Well, instead o’ slowin’ things down, this one speeds you up. It _should_ give you super speed. Haven’t tested it yet, though. Might make you burn up from friction if you use it for more’n a couple seconds, so don’t go crazy with it.”

Super speed certainly sounded promising, caveats aside. Nero started to remove the weapon, then shrugged and left it on his arm. It was comfortable enough, and wearing it meant he could fit one more in reserve. He fished around behind the workbench for a few of the standard models, loaded them into the magazine at his hip, and made his way back to the front of the van. Thousands of pinpoints of light danced around him, reflected from the surface of the Quicksilver.

In the passenger seat, Lady squinted against the glare as he joined them at the front. “Wow, that _is_ a disco ball. Do you do parties?”

Nero snorted and tried to pretend that he’d never used that line himself. “You’ve been hanging around Dante too long.” He ducked to peer through the windshield at the dilapidated mining shacks Nico was speeding past, then braced against the bucket seats as she braked and threw the van into park near the old mine entrance. “Okay, let’s get in there and see if this son of a bitch is still hanging around.”

As they climbed out of the van, Lady rubbed her hands together. “It’s really starting to get cold out here. Had I known I would be spending this much time in the mountains, I would have brought my winter gear from home.”

“Just be glad we’re going in the back way. There’s snow year-round up on Lamina Peak.” Nero pointed toward the top of the mountain and the winding path to the castle’s main entrance. “Though it hasn’t been as bad since the Hellgate closed. I think the Frosts were just getting out of hand.”

The old mine was the shortest route to the castle’s lower levels, but it was far from direct. Another quarter of an hour passed as the trio navigated the maze of tunnels to reach the underground laboratory, but apart from a few vermin, they encountered no enemies. After their planning—such as it was—in the van, it was almost more of a disappointment than a relief that the Nilepoch was nowhere to be found. The new energy fizzing in his arm made Nero itch for a fight.

Still, there were definite signs of the Nilepoch’s recent apparition. In its cell, the Riot was staggered once again, its color faded to the same hazy purple-white as it had been two weeks before. It swayed weakly, not even taking a swipe at Nero as he checked the bars and lock of its cage.

“Well, at least it seems our theory was sound.” Lady leaned back against a rusted barrel while Nico adjusted and reset the monitor sensors. “The Nilepoch returned to the same victim, and apparently drained it the same way as before. So in theory, it should come back here again in about…” She tallied the time on her fingers. “It’s been thirteen days, hasn’t it? I think we last saw it on a Thursday.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you’re right. It was the day after Kyrie worked at the orphanage.” Nero finished another restless sweep of the perimeter. “I wish we had some way to trap it here when it comes back, so we could just deal with the damned thing. I’m already sick of waiting for it to come to us.”

“If we knew more about how its powers functioned, maybe we could, but it would likely require more arcane know-how than I have.” Lady shrugged. “At least it’s somewhat predictable, now. We’ll just have to set up an ambush. A week from next Tuesday, we’ll be back here, waiting. We can even set up some solid cover to prepare.”

“Two more weeks until we can take another shot at it.” Nero paced the room, burning off his agitation. “And we still don’t even know for sure if we can kill it.”

“At least we have a countdown.” Lady rolled her neck and stretched. “Look at it this way: This is one problem you don’t have to worry about for two more weeks. You can focus on other things.”

“Yeah, an’ now that Gigi or whatever her name is is off the streets, maybe we’ll actually get some payin’ work.” Nico stood and dusted her hands. “We still gotta get some answers from her, too.”

Lady nodded. “And now we can afford to spend a few days just working on that. Rosso and Zaffiro will likely need some extra attention, too.”

“Rosso an’ Zaffiro?” Nico frowned. “Somethin’ happen to them?”

“You could say that,” Nero hedged. “We’ll fill you in on the way back. You finished here?”

“Yeah, everythin’ looks good. Couple o’ the mounts got knocked over, but the sensors are all still workin’ okay.”

They began the return journey through the twisting corridors, Lady giving Nico the highlights of the previous evening’s events as they walked. Nero noted she omitted the details of the nightmares and what Trish had told them, which was just as well; knowing Nico, she’d be likely to say something about it and upset the twins, or irritate Dante and Vergil—if they were ever fully restored to their adult selves—by asking them inappropriate questions. Nico’s heart was in the right place, but her mouth was usually somewhere off the map.

They were just approaching the mine entrance when Nero heard a chittering sound from up ahead. Lady drew one of her semiautomatics, but Nero held up a hand to stop her. “Allow me.” He flashed a fierce grin. “I’m in the mood to punch something.”

“Suit yourself.” Lady re-holstered the pistol. “You see it?”

“Not yet, but it’s close.” He peered ahead to the square of light that led out to the clearing where they’d parked the van and caught sight of a staggering burlap body capped by veined petals. Dull sunlight gleamed from its bladed tentacles. “Aw, it’s just a Chimera. Too easy.”

The Chimera reoriented toward Nero as it sensed his approach, and Nero charged. His right hand automatically curled into a fist as he lunged forward, and something _clicked_ within the mechanism surrounding his arm.

In the next instant, Nero had burst out into the sunlight. Light refracted from the Quicksilver, splitting into prismatic beams that spread and blurred like watercolors as Nero streaked through space. Dry heat seared his face and neck as he circled the Chimera and aimed a well-placed blow to one of its lower limbs. The leg snapped into pieces, but the misshapen figure remained suspended in the air. Nero reached back for his sword, more light splintering around him, and Red Queen’s edge flared white-hot as she cleaved through the demon’s body. The coarse fabric of the host Scarecrow sparked and charred along the edges of the cut, slow curls of smoke trailing out into the air.

Nero stopped moving, and abruptly the world caught up to him. The Chimera exploded violently into flame and ash just as heat pulsed through Red Queen’s steel, burning Nero’s hand even through the protective grip. He planted the tip of the blade in the ground and let it go, shaking his hand to cool it. “Hot damn!” Nero burst, with a complete lack of irony.

Before Nero could move again, Nico dashed out of the mine entrance and slapped him across the top of the head. “Ow!” Nero threw his arms up to shield himself, but she continued smacking him with flattened palms. “What the hell, Nico?”

“You’re on fire, you moron!” Nico whacked him over the head a few more times, then gave him one final slap that he suspected had nothing to do with smothering a flame. “I warned you about the friction, idiot!”

“Would you cut it out?” Nero ducked away from her. “Get off me! I’m fine!”

“Your hair _was_ smoking,” Lady said mildly as she joined them. She brushed stray ash from Nero’s shoulder. “I know I’m not the expert here, but I think that model might need a few adjustments before you use it again.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Nero flexed his fingers, then reconsidered the motion and slipped his arm free from the Devil Breaker. The Quicksilver energy that had surged through him departed abruptly, leaving his limbs heavy. Suddenly, every part of him felt utterly drained. “You know what? I’m beat. Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this chapter six months ago—and of course the chapter of _Visions of V_ that actually shows what happens when young Vergil returns to the burning house releases ONE DAY before this chapter is scheduled to post. /sigh/ I decided to leave my version as it is, because it fits with the way I’ve written the character in this story, and I don’t want to try to do flying rewrites every time something new comes out. (Honestly, so much of DMC canon is internally inconsistent that I think there’s room for a little fudging on the details.)
> 
> Technically Quicksilver (DMC3) and Ragtime (DMC5) are both derived from Geryon, so I figured, why not combine them? Also I’m sorry, but Nero is now a human disco ball. And I’m not actually sorry at all. [Vergil voice] _But you already knew that._


	34. Chapter 34

Kyrie was up and preparing lunch by the time they returned to the house. “Welcome back,” she called, leaning out into the hall from the kitchen. Her eyes slid past Lady and Nico to fix on Nero, and her lips pursed into a pout. “You owe me something, mister. You know the house rules!”

It took him a second to work out her meaning. “Oh, yeah, I do. Sorry. I didn’t want to wake you.” He planted a solid kiss on her mouth. “And here’s the interest.” Another kiss followed.

Lady waited until they separated between arching her eyebrows. “Do these rules apply to everyone? Because I like all of you, but I’m not sure I’m prepared to go _that_ far.”

“I wish,” Nico put in loudly. Lady turned to stare at her, and Nico flushed red. “Uh. No, I meant… Not you. Not that I _wouldn_ _’t_ , I mean, I totally would if you… but that’s not… Not that I _really_ meant Kyrie, either, because she’s not… uh… never mind.”

Nero rolled his eyes at Nico before answering Lady’s question. “House rules state that the person leaving for work always gives the person staying home a goodbye kiss. The rule does not apply to guests, and _definitely_ does not apply to Nico.”

“Can’t blame a girl for tryin’,” Nico sulked. “Got more chance o’ bein’ struck by lightnin’ than findin’ a decent date on this boring-ass island. If I didn’t smoke, my lips would curl up an’ die from lack o’ use.”

“With as much as you talk?” Nero snorted. “Your lips will probably outlive the rest of you.”

“Oh, hush, both of you.” Despite the shadows that hung beneath her eyes, Kyrie seemed refreshed after her nap. She ushered them into the kitchen, where Trish was already seated at the table, paging through another magazine she’d found somewhere. “Lunch is almost ready. I’m sorry it’s nothing fancy. I was going to go to the market yesterday, but with everything that happened, I didn’t have the chance.”

“Yeah, the hospital thing sort of stole your whole day. I’ll hold down the fort here if you want to run the rest of your errands today.” Nero glanced up at the clock. “Unless you’re still planning on going in to the orphanage?”

She shook her head. “I called last night to tell them I wouldn’t be in today, and Sister Gratia said they would just close the office. Apparently Sister Harriet still isn’t well, so they’re understaffed. They’ve been trying to recruit more volunteers from the community, but no one’s able to put the time in just now.”

That only made Nero feel worse about interfering with Kyrie’s work. “Well, at least the next couple of weeks should be quieter. Near as we can tell, the Nilepoch’s running on a thirteen-day cycle.”

Trish looked up from her magazine. “Oh, good. That means I can be in on the kill. I should be back up to fighting speed by then, especially with all the rest I’ll be getting at the hospital.”

“I explained about Gigi,” Kyrie said. “Trish has kindly agreed to watch over her.”

“It keeps me safely out of the reach of children,” Trish added dryly. Her eyes flicked to Nero. “Are you sure the pizzeria delivers there?”

“Positive.” Nero squeezed past Kyrie to the sink and began to scrub his hands vigorously. He could tolerate a little dirt or demon blood coming in contact with his food, but who knew _what_ kind of chemicals or disease agents he might have picked up in Agnus’s lab. “Hey, how are the twins doing? Have they been up at all?”

“I checked on them a little while ago. Rosso was still a little jumpy, but he calmed down after I sat with him for a few minutes. I gave him some warm milk and read him a story, and eventually he went back to sleep. But Zaffiro…” Kyrie bit her lip. “He seems more responsive, but he’s still not speaking. I was able to get him to drink a little water, though. I’m hoping food will help.” She flipped the cheese sandwich she was toasting in the skillet. “Grilled cheese is the panacea of many childhood ailments.”

“It always worked on me,” Nero agreed. “You want me to take it in to them?”

“They’ve been in bed all morning. It might be best to get them up and dressed, if you can. Otherwise they won’t sleep well tonight.”

Given how traumatic their dreams had been, Nero wasn’t sure the boys would ever sleep well again, but he nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Nero paused at the door of the boys’ bedroom, staring at the twins lying in their bunks and wondering why the sight left him feeling unsettled. Rosso was clearly resting comfortably in his own bed, and while Zaffiro’s eyes were still open, his body was at least relaxed. Neither seemed to be in any great distress, yet there was something about them that seemed _off_ , somehow. Nero stepped between the beds and glanced from one to the other.

As his eyes flicked from side to side, it came to him: The twins were still in separate beds. Though the boys occasionally napped in their own bunks, and usually started each night there, he’d never seen them go an entire night without one of them crawling into the other’s space. Even when they were sulking or fighting or sick of the sight of each other from being trapped in the small house all day, they rarely chose to spend their time in different rooms. They had been all but inseparable since they were infants.

Until now.

Rosso was curled in a tight ball beneath the coverlet, face smashed into his pillow. He came awake easily as Nero touched his shoulder. “Time to get up,” Nero said softly. “Kyrie’s got lunch almost ready. How about you go wash up and get dressed?”

Rosso nodded and rolled upright, but didn’t get out of bed immediately. He rubbed at his eyes with both hands, and Nero could see the glitter of dried salt on his cheeks. “My eyes are itchy.”

“Yeah, you gave ‘em a workout with all that crying last night. Make sure you wash your face really well. That will help.” He prodded the boy’s leg. “Better scoot. Kyrie’s making you her world-famous grilled cheese, and you don’t want it to get cold.”

Rosso squirmed out of bed and headed for the bathroom, and Nero knelt beside Zaffiro’s bed. Deep shadows rimmed the boy’s bloodshot eyes, which shifted cautiously toward Nero. His body lay motionless beneath the blanket, limp with exhaustion, but it was clear he had not slept at all. Nero brushed a stray lock of hair back from Zaffiro’s forehead. “Hey, kiddo. How you feeling?” There was no answer. Nero hadn’t really expected one, but he’d hoped. “You need to eat something, too. You want some help getting up, or can you do it on your own?”

Zaffiro didn’t move, so Nero flipped back the blanket, slid his arms beneath the boy’s shoulders and knees and pulled him to the edge of the bed. Once Nero put him in a sitting position, Zaffiro’s own sense of balance took over and he held himself upright, though he swayed in a way that reminded Nero of the stunned Riot they’d left in the laboratory earlier that day. Nero retrieved a change of clothes for him, and with a little more prompting, Zaffiro managed to stand and walk unsteadily to the bathroom under his own power.

Rosso was just rinsing his toothbrush when they entered. His eyes met his brother’s in the mirror and held them for a few seconds while something that Nero couldn’t identify passed between them. Then Rosso broke the contact, looking away as he placed his toothbrush back in the holder. “I’ll go get dressed,” he mumbled, hurrying past them to escape down the hallway.

Zaffiro didn’t react to his brother’s abrupt departure. Trancelike, he moved to the sink and began brushing his teeth. Nero stayed for a minute, watching to make sure that the boy wouldn’t collapse or otherwise endanger himself, but while all his movements were purely mechanical and his face remained expressionless, Zaffiro seemed to have recovered enough to manage the basic tasks on his own.

Rosso, squeezed into a red sweater that was already growing too short in the wrists, had joined the adults in the kitchen by the time Nero went in pursuit of him. He nudged the boy’s shoulder. “Hey. Everything okay between you and your brother?”

Rosso replied with a noncommittal shrug. “I guess.”

Kyrie picked up on Nero’s concern as she set a plate with half of the cheese sandwich and a small bowl of soup in front of Rosso. “Did you two have another fight?”

“No.” Rosso tore off a bit of crust and dunked it in the soup.

Nero shrugged at Kyrie over the boy’s head and helped her hand out the rest of the food before going in search of Zaffiro again. He found him standing in the bathroom, half-dressed, staring down at the shirt in his hands. From the vacant look in his eyes, he wasn’t really seeing it.

Anxiety twisted Nero’s gut at the clear evidence of how much damage the normally sharp-minded child had sustained, but he tried not to let it show as he took the shirt from Zaffiro’s unresisting fingers. “Here, let me help you with that.” Nero gathered the material and slipped it over Zaffiro’s head. The boy seemed to return to awareness, and his slender arms wormed their way into the sleeves. “Kyrie’s got your lunch all ready. It looks really good. Let’s go eat before your brother finishes it all, okay?”

He steered Zaffiro down the hall and into the kitchen, where the boy obediently sat in the chair Nero pulled out for him, but did not return the smiles or greetings of the adults. He showed no interest in the food Kyrie placed in front of him, but at Nero’s repeated prompting, spooned some of the soup into his mouth. Rosso cast a couple of hooded glances in his brother’s direction, but never attempted to engage with him.

A silent conversation took place among the adults in the form of concerned glances and wordless gestures passed over the table. It was clear that both children were still suffering ill effects, but none of them quite knew what to do about it. Predictably, it was Nico whose tolerance of the quiet atmosphere failed first. “So,” she burst after a few minutes of silence, “uh, what are we gonna do for the next thirteen days? Seems like we should be makin’ some preparations before we go back to the lab.”

Nero and Lady exchanged looks of alarm before Lady fixed Nico with a glare. “I thought we weren’t going to discuss those plans in present company?” She jerked her head meaningfully toward Rosso and Zaffiro.

Nico shrugged. “Just figured if I’m s’posed to be makin’ anything special for the occasion, I oughta get on it right away. Lemme know if there’s a shoppin’ list, is all.”

“Speaking of shopping,” Kyrie jumped in quickly, “I thought I’d go to the market this afternoon. Is there anything in particular you want me to buy?” Her gaze landed on the twins. “Boys, how about your favorite foods? Do you have any requests?”

Rosso let his soup spoon dangle from his mouth as he considered. “Strawberries,” he said after a few seconds’ thought.

Kyrie’s hesitation was almost imperceptible, but Nero caught it. “It’s not quite the right season, but I’ll see if the market has any in.” She flicked an apologetic glance at Nero, but he encouraged her with a nod. Strawberries were a luxury item here, imported and always very expensive, but if buying them helped Rosso bounce back from his traumatic memories, it was a small price to pay. “What about you, Zaffiro? Is there anything special you’d like?”

She had to prompt him again before he looked up at her, and then his only reply to her question was a minute head-shake. He had only picked at his food, and didn’t seem to take much notice of what he was eating. Nero tried to think of what Vergil’s favorite foods might be, but while Dante’s love of pizza and strawberry sundaes was legendary, he couldn’t recall Vergil ever expressing any particular preference for… well, much of _anything,_ now that he thought about it. He wasn’t sure if he’d even seen Vergil eat any food. “Hey, Trish. You know those two guys you live with?”

Trish gave him a quizzical look. “What about them?”

“Does the older one have any favorite foods, or anything?”

“Oh.” Her face cleared in understanding. “Well… I think he puts olives on pizza. He and Dan—” Her eyes flicked to Rosso. “—his brother got into an argument over it once.”

Rosso’s nose crinkled. “Olives are gross,” he declared to no one in particular.

Nero glanced at Zaffiro. Olives were always plentiful and cheap in the whole Mediterranean region, but he couldn’t picture handing the kid a jar of them as a consolation prize. “Anything else? Maybe something more like a treat, or a dessert?”

“Dessert?” Trish’s brow furrowed in concentration. “He doesn’t go in for sundaes… Oh! I did see him with a piece of chocolate once. The fancy kind that’s so dark it’s almost black, and comes in individually-wrapped tasting squares. His brother threw a fit over it. He said he could have bought an entire pizza for what a single piece of that stuff cost. I guess it’s hand-mixed, or something. He didn’t offer to share.”

Nero offered this to Kyrie with a shrug, and she nodded. “I doubt we have anything of that quality here, but I’ll see what I can find.”

When they had finished eating—and when Zaffiro had taken at least a few bites of his sandwich, at Nero’s insistence—Kyrie began filling the sink with water while Nero cleared the plates from the table. “I’ll finish up in here,” Kyrie whispered when he brought her the dishes. “Why don’t you see if you can get the boys to play a game or something?”

Nero glanced back at the table. Rosso was staring pensively at his hands, while Zaffiro gazed into empty space. “I’m not sure they’re in the mood for games.”

“Then try taking them for a walk. They always want to go outside.”

That was true enough—though for the first time, they didn’t leap at the chance. When Nero suggested they go to the park, Rosso gave a subdued nod and walked—not ran, as he usually would—to collect his shoes and coat. Zaffiro gave no reaction at all, merely sitting quietly until Nero prodded him out of the chair and put his coat on him.

“Kyrie, why don’t you go with them?” Lady suggested suddenly. “I’ll finish cleaning up.”

Nero looked up from buttoning Zaffiro’s coat. “You _are_ better with kids than any of us.”

Kyrie dried her hands on a towel. “All right. Maybe we can think up something creative to do along the way.”

“They liked the scavenger hunt I made up for ‘em,” Nico suggested.

“Oh? That’s a good idea.” Kyrie looked at Nero, then followed his gaze to Zaffiro. The boy’s passive behavior made it clear he wasn’t going to engage in any of their usual games. “There’s always people-watching, too. Maybe we can combine those into something that doesn’t require a lot of running around.”

They collected Rosso and set off in the direction of the park. Nero kept Zaffiro’s hand firmly in his, though this time it wasn’t for fear of the boy running off. Zaffiro’s eyes kept up a constant metronome sweep as they walked, failing to fix on any single point, and his steps dragged. Nero suspected that if he stopped pulling him along, Zaffiro would drift to a halt and freeze up somewhere along the side of the road, withdrawing into whatever internal world he was seeing instead of their own.

Rosso was at least moving with purpose, if not enthusiasm. His hand stayed in Kyrie’s the entire time, and unlike their usual walks, he didn’t attempt to negotiate his freedom. On the few occasions he spoke, his words were subdued and phrased more politely than usual.

The park was sparsely populated in the post-lunchtime lull, and when the boys showed no interest in going off on their own, Kyrie led them to a bench facing one of the walking paths. “Let’s play a game. Each team will pick a color, and we’ll watch to see how many people wearing that color go by. The first team to reach ten wins.”

Nero recognized the genius of her suggestion. The game was simple enough, but it required the boys to pay attention to something external instead of dwelling on their unpleasant memories. The most basic of distractions might draw them out. “Sounds like fun. How about Zaffiro and I are on one team, and you two can be the other.”

“All right.” Kyrie turned to Rosso. “What color should we pick?”

“Red,” Rosso said without hesitation.

“Could have predicted that one.” Nero looked down at Zaffiro, who had said nothing all day. “I’ll bet you want blue, right?” The boy still didn’t respond, and Nero sighed. “Right, blue it is. But you have to keep count, okay? You can use your fingers if you don’t want to count out loud.”

Team Red scored the first two points, and then Team Blue netted a pair of indigo jeans and a baby-blue jacket. Nero counted each point verbally, and only once had to prompt Zaffiro to add a finger to his tally. To his great relief, the boy’s roving gaze finally settled, and after a few minutes he did seem to be watching the passersby. At one point he flicked a finger to count a point before Nero even spotted the man in the blue ball cap. Kyrie’s simple game was working.

In the end, Team Red beat them by one point, but no one really seemed to care about the outcome. When Kyrie asked if they would like to play again, Rosso leaned forward and scanned the park. “May I go to the swings instead?”

“Of course,” Kyrie answered.

“Just stay where we can see you, and come back if I whistle,” Nero added. Rosso trotted away, less energetic than usual but still much improved over his previous state, and Nero turned to Zaffiro. “Do you want to go with him?”

Zaffiro’s head twitched back and forth in a negative, and they fell into silence. Soon Zaffiro’s eyes acquired that haunted, distant look again, obsessively sweeping the green space before them. Nero pointed to him and appealed wordlessly to Kyrie. She sighed and tried to put an arm around Zaffiro’s shoulders. The boy spooked at the contact, jerking away, his eyes darting around in panic. For an instant, Nero thought he would bolt.

“Whoa, hey, easy.” Nero showed his hands to Zaffiro, giving clear warning before touching him. He pulled him gently back against his side in an attempt to quell his trembling. “Okay, calm down. Breathe. You’re safe with us. You know that, right?”

Kyrie glanced between them, appraising the reaction. “That was my fault,” she said suddenly, sliding off the bench to kneel at Zaffiro’s eye level. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m sorry. Will you accept my apology?” She held out a hand. Zaffiro hesitated, but after a moment put his hand in hers. “Thank you. You know, we might be able to make you feel more safe if you could tell us what it is you’re afraid of. I know your dream must have been…” She nearly faltered, and Nero knew she was thinking of what Trish had told them. “…really scary, and I’m sure that’s not an easy thing to get out of your mind. But it seems like something else is bothering you, too. Is there something more you’re worried about?”

Zaffiro’s eyes, again wide with anxiety, swept the park before coming back to Kyrie. He nodded.

Kyrie placed her other hand over Zaffiro’s, still resting in hers. “Is it something from your dream?”

Another nod. Nero scarcely dared to breathe, for fear it would interrupt this breakthrough.

Kyrie must have been feeling the same. She took a moment to choose her words. “It seems like you’re watching for something. Is that right?”

A nod.

“Can you tell me what it is you’re looking for?”

Zaffiro’s lips moved, but no sound emerged. Nero held his breath, and Kyrie waited patiently. After a few seconds, the boy tried again. “Bad things,” he whispered.

It took all Nero’s self-control not to groan aloud. He knew Zaffiro’s return to verbal speech was a massive step in the right direction, but “bad things” was about as nonspecific as you could get.

Kyrie must have sensed his frustration, for she flicked Nero a warning glance. It was her only visible reaction, and lasted no more than a fraction of a second. “In your dream, are the bad things something that hurt you?”

Zaffiro shook his head. “They want to.”

“They want to hurt you?”

“They… follow me.”

Something clicked in Nero’s memory. Trish had mentioned something about the twins being in hiding, hadn’t she? Something about the servants of Mundus… “Like they’re _hunting_ you?”

The boy nodded. “And… they were…they…” His eyes welled with tears. “They were _there_.”

This time Kyrie’s eyes met Nero’s, and she looked sick with the realization. “At… the house?”

Beneath Nero’s hands, Zaffiro was trembling again. “They laughed,” he whispered. “They were waiting, all around, and they laughed…”

Zaffiro’s face turned pale and waxen, and he twisted suddenly out of Nero’s grasp. He made it only a few steps into the grass before falling to his knees and vomiting. Kyrie knelt beside him, rubbing his back. “It’s all right,” she murmured, her voice steady and soothing despite the tears Nero could see glinting on her lashes. “Just sit and breathe. Nero, could you fetch some water from that cafe across the street?”

Nero went, his own stomach knotting in a complicated mix of rage and compassion. The fire at his core burned bright with the desire to make this right. Every part of him wanted to hunt down the creatures responsible for inflicting such pain on an innocent child and tear them limb from limb. But the demons tormenting Zaffiro were the ghosts of nearly forty years before, and Nero knew he was powerless to defeat the menaces of memory.

By the time Nero returned with a cup of water, Kyrie had moved Zaffiro back to the bench. The boy had withdrawn into himself again, eyes sweeping the area in a restless arc.

Kyrie took the cup from his hand and held it to the boy’s lips. “We’ll get through this,” she whispered, more to Nero than to Zaffiro. “It will be all right. All things heal in time.”

Nero smoothed back Zaffiro’s tousled hair and prayed she was right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, _one_ of the brothers had to be the one to say “I want chocolate!” in that birthday flashback in DMC1. My vote is with Vergil. His tastes have no doubt matured since then, and now he’s a chocolate snob ~~just like me~~.
> 
> I also eat olives on pizza. Coincidence? I think not.


	35. Chapter 35

With Gigi out of the picture, regular business began to trickle back in. Nico received requests for demon extermination every few days now, and while the jobs didn’t pay much, Nero was thrilled to return to his true calling. With the Nilepoch’s return still nearly two weeks away, he needed every warm-up fight he could get. He’d spent a full month out of the game, and though his skills were far from rusty, he knew he’d need to be in top form to face such a dangerous enemy.

When he wasn’t hunting the vermin of the underworld, Nero divided his time between catching up on the mundane household tasks he’d been postponing and keeping a watchful eye on Rosso and Zaffiro. By the weekend, Rosso was almost back to his usual self, though he still kept some distance from his brother. Zaffiro remained quiet and withdrawn, and each morning his eyes were hung with the shadows of insomnia.

“Do you think we ought to consider medication?” Kyrie wondered aloud as she and Nero cleaned up the kitchen after Sunday’s breakfast. “Or maybe a natural sleep aid? I’m worried that Zaffiro will make himself ill if he continues like this. A boy his age should be sleeping for at least eight to ten hours, and I don’t think he’s even getting half that.”

“I’m not sure knocking him out with drugs is going to improve anything. The dreams are the problem, and medicine can’t stop his real memories from coming back.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Kyrie sighed. “I just hate seeing him so worn down. He was always so attentive and interested in learning new things, but I haven’t even seen him pick up a book for the past few days.” She handed Nero the last plate to dry. “Do you know what happened to him… after?”

“You mean after Eva died? Nothing specific.” He glanced back at Lady, still nursing a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. “How about you?”

Lady shook her head. “I didn’t meet him until years later. If anyone knows, it’ll be Trish. Why?”

“I was just wondering whether it was that same dream troubling him, or if there were new ones each night. It might help us know how to respond if we knew exactly what he was afraid of.” Kyrie rinsed and dried her hands before crossing to the telephone. “I should think the hospital can find someone to replace Trish for a couple of hours. I’ll invite her to come back here for lunch, and we can talk.”

“We’d better do something with of the rest of the kids, then,” Nero said. “We definitely don’t want them listening in on _that_ conversation.”

“Oh, right.” She drummed her fingers against the telephone. “How about a picnic lunch? We can send them to the park. I’m sure Julio can keep them out of trouble for a while.”

Nero laughed. Julio had entered into Nero’s confidence with the enthusiasm of a conspirator, and had been eager for chances to prove himself reliable. “Yeah, I’m sure he can.”

* * *

When Nero suggested an outdoor lunch at the park a few hours later, the children cheered and bustled eagerly into shoes and coats. Julio waited by the kitchen door until they were out of hearing range. “How long do you need me to keep them busy?” he murmured when Nero handed him the loaded picnic basket.

“An hour should be good,” Nero replied. “Thanks.”

Rosso was waiting with the rest of the kids when Nero joined them at the door, but Zaffiro was still curled up in a corner of the sofa, where he’d been all morning. Nero detoured to nudge his shoulder. “Hey, why don’t you go with them? It’s a nice day. Should be perfect picnic weather.”

Zaffiro’s head twitched from side to side, and Nero suppressed a sigh. “Suit yourself. Okay, kids, you know the rules. Julio’s in charge.” He watched them romp down the sidewalk after Julio before shutting the door.

Kyrie was readying their own lunch in the kitchen, and Lady was in the room she shared with Flavia, leaving Nero and Zaffiro alone in the front room. Nero circled the couch to make sure Zaffiro could see him clearly—he had been jumpy ever since the onset of his nightmares—and crouched to his eye level. The boy didn’t even look at him. “What am I gonna do with you?” Nero murmured. “I know you’re scared of something, kid, but I wish I could make you believe that whatever it is isn’t _here_.”

It was clear that Zaffiro wasn’t listening. Rather, he wasn’t listening to _Nero_. His head was canted to one side, ear turned toward the kitchen. Nero hadn’t really noticed that Kyrie was singing to herself as she worked; her sweet voice was such a part of the house, an ever-present element of its welcoming ambiance, that he almost expected to hear it whenever he was home. But something about her singing had clearly arrested Zaffiro’s attention, and considering how the boy had kept himself closed off for the past few days, that in itself was noteworthy.

After a minute or so, Kyrie finished her song and moved into the laundry room. Zaffiro turned toward Nero, a crease forming between his eyebrows. “What day is today?”

“Sunday.”

Zaffiro’s teeth pulled at his lower lip. “Are we still… in trouble?”

What the hell did _that_ mean? Did he think Nero would be angry at him for his bad dreams? “No, of course you aren’t in any trouble.”

“Then…” The boy met Nero’s eyes for the first time since the dreadful night he’d awakened screaming. “I can play violin again?”

Nero nearly tipped over backward in his relief. This was the first thing Zaffiro had asked for in _days._ Perhaps he was on the road to recovery after all. “Yeah, we can go. How about tomorrow, after breakfast? I’ll call to make sure the shop will be open then.”

Zaffiro nodded, but a few seconds later his shoulders hitched up in obvious terror, and he twisted to stare at the front door.

“Hey, take it easy,” Nero said, automatically reaching for the boy’s arms. “What’s wrong?”

“Something’s coming.” Zaffiro’s breathing was fast and ragged. “Something is…”

The front door opened. Nero leaped to his feet, power surging into his right arm as he prepared to vault the couch and take on the threat…

Trish stood in the doorway. She lowered her sunglasses, blinked at him, glanced back over her shoulder toward the sidewalk, then cocked her head at him in a visual question. “Is something wrong?”

Nero let the power he’d gathered dissipate and laughed weakly. “No. Nothing’s wrong. You just, uh, startled me.” He glanced down at Zaffiro, who had entrenched himself deep in the gap between cushions as though he could vanish into the upholstery. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s just Trish. Why don’t you come out and say hello?”

Zaffiro stayed where he was.

Nero sighed and threw up his hands. “Fine, live in the couch if you want to. Lunch is in the kitchen, Trish. How’s the leg?”

“Much better.” Trish glanced over the back of the sofa as she passed, but made no attempt to engage Zaffiro. “Kyrie said she had some questions for me?”

“Yeah. Go on in; I’ll grab Lady and join you in a second.”

Trish flashed a sly smile. “Just be careful _where_ you grab her, if you don’t want to lose another arm.”

* * *

It was evident from the way Trish tucked into her food that her appetite had in no way been diminished by days of sitting in a hospital ward eating pizza. “I’m afraid I’m not much help,” she said around a mouthful of grilled tomato, after Kyrie had explained Zaffiro’s reluctance to sleep. “Most of the memories Mundus extracted were from when Eva died, or much later, when Dante defeated him—forcing Vergil to relive his worst failures, to wear him down. I know that Mundus’s servants were searching for both of Sparda’s sons, so I imagine Vergil must have been running and hiding from them somehow, but I can’t give you any details. I didn’t exist yet.”

“That leaves about eleven years completely unaccounted for,” Lady said. “They were eight when Eva died, and nineteen when I met them. Vergil could have been _anywhere_ in between.”

“Ten years,” Nero corrected. “We do know when he was here in Fortuna.”

“How do we—oh. Of course. I guess that is one fixed point on the timeline.”

“I mean, give or take a few months. I don’t know my actual birth date.”

Kyrie reached over to brush Nero’s hand. “Well, if we don’t have any way to know what happened during those years, we’ll just have to be as supportive as we can, and hope he can overcome his fear with time.”

Nero nodded. “He did ask to go play violin again, so that’s a good sign. I told him we’d go tomorrow.”

“Oh, wonderful!” Kyrie beamed. “Maybe you can take Rosso with you. I’m a little concerned at the way he’s been acting, too.”

“Yeah. I don’t know what to make of that, either.” Nero poked at his plate. “You know, this week has not been a great confidence-booster. Factor in figuring out how we’re gonna kill the Nilepoch, and I’m zero for three on our crisis front.”

“Well, you can’t use a gun,” Trish said as she liberated another slice of bread from the basket. All eyes swiveled to her, and she raised an eyebrow in return. “On the Nilepoch. Not Rosso, obviously.”

“How do you know that?” Lady asked. “Have you fought it?”

“Of course not. Gigi told me.”

“She _talked_ to you?” Kyrie’s eyes widened. “She wouldn’t tell us anything!”

“Well, after three days of truly revolting hospital food, she was just about willing to sell her soul for a slice of the pizza she was smelling.” Trish smirked. “I was getting bored just sitting there, and talking seemed a better way to pass the time anyway, so I struck a bargain with her: One slice per honest answer.”

“Genius,” Lady pronounced. “I never imagined your pizza obsession would actually pay off. What else did she say?”

Trish ticked off answers on her fingers. “She’s seventeen; she grew up in a town called Padua, but moved here a couple of years ago; she’s seen the Nilepoch twice and fled from it after realizing that she couldn’t harm it with her gun. The first time, she was doing some target practice in a warehouse near the docks. Some man ran in after hearing gunfire, and it went after him instead.”

“Tonio,” Nero breathed.

“The second time was in a different warehouse, and you two caught her as she was trying to escape.”

“But who _is_ she?” Nero pressed. “Was she the one who summoned the demons at the orphanage? Why is a kid like that hunting demons at all?”

“I don’t know; I ran out of pizza.” Trish shrugged. “Though as to your last question, I suspect it’s for revenge, because demons killed her family.”

“Poor girl,” Kyrie sighed. “Did she tell you what happened?”

Trish shook her head. “She didn’t say anything about it, but I can tell. The three of you, Dante, even Vergil—you’ve all lost family to demons. She carries that same weight.”

Silence blanketed the table as each of them were drawn reluctantly into memory, but it was soon broken by a soft rustle at the door. Nero looked over to see Zaffiro peering around the corner at them.

“Oh!” Kyrie gasped. “Of course, you didn’t go with the others, did you. You must be hungry.” She stood and beckoned the boy to a chair. “Here, have a seat and I’ll get you some lunch.”

The chair she held out was the one beside Trish, and Zaffiro stared at the hunter for a long time before climbing into the seat. Trish did her best to ignore his scrutiny and returned to her meal, but every time she reached for something on the table, Zaffiro jerked back in alarm.

“Relax, kiddo.” Nero kept his tone as light as possible. “I know she eats a lot, but she’s not gonna steal your food.”

Zaffiro’s eyes flicked from Nero to Trish. After a moment he slid down and crept over to Kyrie at the stove. “May I eat in the other room?” he whispered.

Kyrie glanced at Nero, who spread his hands in a shrug. “All right,” she said after a moment’s consideration. “You may eat at the coffee table. Just this once. Bring your silverware, please.” She carried the plate out, and Zaffiro darted back to the table to retrieve his utensils, keeping a wary eye on Trish all the while.

When the boy had hurried after Kyrie, Nero slumped back in his chair. “Well, that was random. I don’t have a frickin’ _clue_ what’s going on with that kid.”

“I do,” Trish said quietly. “He can sense what I am.”

“What, he freaks out just because you show up on his devil-radar? He’s met you before and it never bothered him.”

“That’s not it. We know he was hunted by servants of Mundus. He must have learned to sense them coming—not just creatures of the underworld in general, but the forces of Mundus, specifically. Staying one step ahead of the demons that were hunting him is the only way he could have survived.”

“So?”

“Mundus _created_ me, Nero. I was an empty vessel, filled with his power. To a child who can barely recognize the subtleties of underworld energy, I am indistinguishable from a servant of Mundus. Because that’s what I _was_.”

“Damn.” Nero ran a hand through his hair. “So when he sensed you outside earlier, he really thought something was coming for him.”

Trish nodded. “And Fortuna is saturated with all kinds of trace energies from what the Order did, and the few demons that are still here. If he’s able to sense those, as well…”

“Poor kid,” Lady sighed. “No wonder he’s on edge, with all that noise in his head. He’s probably terrified.”

Trish set down her fork and stood. “I shouldn’t stay here. Now that they have recovered enough of their memories to be able to recognize demons, my presence will only upset them.”

“Trish, you don’t have to—”

“It’s all right, really,” she said hastily. “I’ll go back to the hospital and see if I can get some more answers out of Gigi. We can keep in touch by phone, and I’ll join you when it’s time to hunt the Nilepoch.”

Nero nodded. “We’ll definitely want you on hand for that.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for anything.” Trish flashed a smile, and the melancholy that had settled over her all but vanished. “In the mean time, there is a girl languishing in the hospital with only boiled vegetables and reconstituted starch products to eat. Make a list of all the questions you want answered, and I’ll see how many pizzas it takes.”

* * *

The children returned from their picnic an hour later, chattering loudly about knights and dragons. Kyrie made a valiant attempt to settle them down so the youngest kids would take their afternoon naps, but they showed no signs of calming. Lady quickly sought refuge in the kitchen, where Nero was engaged in scrubbing some burned residue off of the stove top. “Mind if I hide out in here until there’s a little less chaos in the house?”

Nero laughed. “I admire your optimism.”

“They’ve got to stop and breathe eventually.” Lady dropped into a chair and opened the book she’d been reading. “You know, I’ve been looking through some of the Order’s reference materials, and they’re actually quite interesting. Did you know that—” She broke off suddenly as Julio entered the kitchen, arms wrapped around the picnic basket. His hair was mussed, and he looked a bit overwhelmed.

“Here, let me get that.” Nero tossed the rag he’d been using on the stove into the sink and took the basket from Julio. “How’d it go?”

“Pretty good, but everyone was really wound up for some reason.” Julio went to the sink and washed his hands. “After trying to keep them all in line on the way home, I think _I_ may need a nap. Or at least some time to read in peace.”

Nero chuckled. “Good luck finding a quiet spot in this house.”

Without being asked, Julio began helping Nero unpack the basket. “I guess I could always go back to the park. It was pretty empty, for being a weekend. The only other person there was this weird old guy.”

“Oh? What was weird about him?”

“Well, even though it was a nice day, he had a big white hood on. But not like a hoodie. It was like a separate thing that covered his shoulders, too.”

“That sounds like an Order cowl. A few years ago, almost everybody here wore those, at least on ceremonial days. He’s probably just one of those people who couldn’t let go of the Order’s teachings after following them their whole lives. Was he pretty old?”

“I guess. I mean, I couldn’t see his face under the hood, but he walked with a cane, so probably.” The boy shrugged. “I guess maybe he wasn’t all that weird, really. I mean, all he did was sit on a bench and watch us play, and people do that all the time. I just thought the hood was strange.”

“Yeah, he’s probably just some lonely old man. If he’s still clinging to the Order ways, I doubt he has a lot of close friends or family. Maybe it just made him feel better to watch you kids all having fun.”

“Aw, that’s sad.” Julio frowned. “Now I wish I’d gone over to talk to him. By the time we were finished with our game he’d gone, though.”

Nero reached over Julio’s head to set the empty basket on top of the refrigerator. “Hey, speaking of games, what’s all that dragon business about? The kids have been talking nonstop ever since they got back.”

“Everyone finished eating really quick, so I made up a game. We pretended the jungle gym was a castle and the picnic basket was a treasure. One person played the dragon guarding the treasure, and everyone else was a knight. If you got tagged by the dragon, you had to go back to the edge of the playground and start over, but if you reached the basket, you won and got to be the next dragon.”

“That’s a pretty awesome game. You come up with that yourself?”

Julio gave a modest shrug. “I had to think of something everyone could play together. Flavia’s too little to play football or tag, but she’s really good at climbing.” He hesitated before adding, “There was something weird, though. _Actually_ weird, not just guy-in-a-hood weird.”

“What?”

“Well, everyone who was playing a knight had to be called Sir. You know, Sir Carlo, Sir Kyle… but Rosso insisted on being called Sir Tony.”

Something about that name sounded familiar, but Nero couldn’t quite place it. “Tony?”

“Yeah. Even all the way back to the house, he wanted us to call him Tony. When I asked him why, he just said that’s his name now. I don’t get it.”

Nero glanced at Lady, who shrugged and shook her head. “Well, it’s probably not a big deal.” Nero shook off the nagging memory and returned his attention to the picnic supplies. “Maybe he just really liked playing make-believe.”

By the time they’d finished putting away the leftover food and dishes, the house was much quieter. Nero thanked Julio for his help and sent him off to read. When he’d gone, Lady glanced up from her book. “So. Tony? What do you suppose that’s about?”

“I’m trying to figure that out.” Nero drummed his fingers on the counter. “Hang on a second. I’ll be right back.” He went out to the garage and rifled through the van until he found a crumpled sheaf of papers, crammed into a drawer a year ago and utterly forgotten in the aftermath of the Qliphoth disaster. “Bingo.”

In the kitchen, Lady looked up as Nero dropped the papers beside her book. “Morrison sent me this last year, just after everything kicked off in Red Grave City. Take a look.”

She skimmed the missive, and her eyebrows rose when she reached the relevant passage. “Tony Redgrave?”

“Yeah. I don’t know when he started using that alias, but maybe while Vergil was on the run from Mundus’s forces, Dante just changed his name and hid in plain sight.”

“It makes a certain amount of sense. I’ve actually heard of Tony Redgrave—at least, I’ve heard the name from some of my sleazier underworld contacts—but I never associated him with Dante. I always thought he was just some mercenary.” Lady kept reading, and she blew out a long breath. “Morrison was _very_ free with his information, wasn’t he.”

Belatedly, Nero recalled that the letter had talked about Lady, as well. “I, uh… I don’t think he meant anything by it…”

“It’s fine.” Lady dropped the letter and sighed again. “It’s not like he said anything that wasn’t true.”

Nero gathered the crumpled papers and folded them together. His eyes landed on the scrawl near the bottom of the page: _…mentioned something about them each having killed family. Dante, his brother... and Lady, her father_.

He glanced sideways at Lady, considering her last statement. Suddenly Lady’s plea for Nero to walk away instead of confronting Vergil after he’d learned he was his father made a _hell_ of a lot more sense. _You never recover from that_ , she’d said. He wondered if her admission that it was true meant that she wanted to talk about it.

But Lady picked up her book and turned away, clearly signaling that there was nothing further to discuss.


	36. Chapter 36

Zaffiro was still on edge the next morning, startling at sudden movements and glancing out windows, but after breakfast he donned his shoes and coat and waited quietly by the door. “He must _really_ like violin practice,” Nero murmured to Kyrie as he pulled on his own jacket. “He’s willing to brave whatever he’s afraid of out there to go to the shop.”

Kyrie nodded thoughtfully. “You know, after I lost my parents, I was devastated, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to anyone about it. I could never find the words to describe what I was feeling. Singing was the only thing that gave me the means to express myself.”

“I remember. That’s when you started training for the opera.” Nero glanced toward the door. “You think playing violin will help him get over his issues?”

“I think we should let him try. He hasn’t been able to tell us what’s wrong in words, but perhaps music could be an outlet for him, like it was for me.”

“I just wish he’d picked a cheaper drug,” Nero sighed. “I feel awful every time he has to give the violin back, but there’s no way we could afford it.”

“Let’s just be grateful that the owner of the shop is kind enough to let him play for free.” Kyrie stretched up for the obligatory kiss. “You’d better start out if you’re going to be back in time for lunch.”

“Right.” Nero looked over at the sofa, where Rosso was working on yet another puzzle. “Rosso, you coming to the shop with us?”

Rosso looked up from his activity book, and his eyes slid from Nero to his brother. A near-imperceptible frown flitted across his brow. “No, I’ll stay here.”

Nero almost insisted that he accompany them, but Zaffiro was beginning to fidget at the door, and Nero decided it was better to keep the outing as smooth as possible for Zaffiro’s sake. There wasn’t much for Rosso to do at the shop, and he could be difficult to manage when he was bored. “Fine. Stay out of trouble.”

A cold wind was blowing in from the port side of the island, and Nero used his free hand to turn his coat collar up as they made their way down the street. Through their linked hands, he could feel Zaffiro shiver occasionally, though it was impossible to tell whether that was from cold or anxiety. From time to time, the boy would hesitate and glance in one direction or another. Nero stretched out with his limited devil sense to see if he could detect whatever Zaffiro was reacting to, but either he lacked the sensitivity, or he was so inured to the island’s background noise that he couldn’t distinguish actual demonic presence from the detritus of the Order’s meddling.

The shop owner was waiting for them, violin already laid out on the counter, and beamed at Zaffiro as he entered. “I have a surprise for you, young man!” With a flourish, he presented the boy with a bow. Nero could tell it was different than the one he’d played with before, only because there were fewer loose strands trailing from it, but he couldn’t see anything particularly unique about it. “I managed to find a size down for you!”

Zaffiro thanked the proprietor in a subdued voice and picked up the instrument. Now Nero could see that this bow was a bit shorter than the previous one, and no doubt a better fit for a child’s arms. “Thanks,” he murmured to the shopkeeper once Zaffiro began playing, mindful of Kyrie’s prompt to be grateful. “It’s really kind of you to go out of your way for us.”

“It’s really no trouble,” the man demurred. “Business has been slow, anyway. Plus, I get the benefit of a concert whenever you come by!”

They settled back to listen. The music Zaffiro played was low and undulating—somewhere between mournful and sinister, Nero thought. The boy focused on the instrument with chilling intensity, face rigid, eyes distant. It was a dramatic change from the exploratory melodies he’d played the first few times they had come.

“He seems…” The proprietor hesitated. “I know it’s not really my place to say anything, but…”

It was no use denying that something was wrong. “He’s had a rough week. There was a… a death in the family.” It wasn’t _entirely_ inaccurate, he reasoned.

“Oh, no! I’m terribly sorry.”

Nero nodded to acknowledge the sentiment. “I was hoping this might cheer him up, but so far it’s not sounding too cheerful.”

“You never know. Considering how much of humanity’s greatest art has come out of times of personal darkness, there must be something healing about the act of creating.”

“I hope you’re right,” Nero murmured. _Because this child needs a_ lot _of healing_.

* * *

When they returned to the house shortly before lunchtime, Lady and Rosso were seated at opposite ends of the couch in the living room. They both looked up as Nero and Zaffiro entered. Rosso’s eyes tracked his brother only until Zaffiro glanced toward him, at which point his gaze flicked quickly to the window.

Nero sent Zaffiro ahead to wash up. “Hey.” He dropped into the armchair and reached over to prod Rosso’s leg. “You wanna tell me what’s going on between you two?”

“Nothing.” The answer came too quickly.

“Up until a week ago, the two of you were practically joined at the hip. Now you aren’t even speaking to each other. That’s not nothing.”

Rosso just shrugged and stared out the window.

Lady caught Nero’s eye and gestured for him to back off. Nero raised his hands and went to hang his coat in the front closet. Behind him, he heard Lady rearrange herself on the couch. “Hey, Rosso.”

“Tony,” the boy corrected.

“Okay. Tony, if you prefer that. Can I tell you about something that happened when I was a kid?”

Nero sneaked a glance back into the room. Rosso/Tony was giving Lady a curious look. “Sure.”

Lady had drawn her knees up to her chest and was leaning deep into the cushions. “When I was a few years older than you are now, I lost my mother. I’d been away at gymnastics camp, and when I got back, I found out she had been… that she had died. While I was gone.” Lady paused for a steadying breath. “After that happened, my whole life changed. I was upset, and I was angry. I stopped doing all the things that had been important to me before. School, gymnastics, seeing my friends… I gave it all up. I couldn’t go on with my life as though nothing had changed, because for me, it felt like _everything_ had changed. So if something like that has happened with you and your brother, I think I can understand, a little bit. Sometimes going through something painful or scary can make you feel like you have to change things. Change the way you act, who you spend time with. Maybe even change your name. Is that how you’re feeling now?”

The boy shook his head.

“I hope not. Because I realized, years later, that I missed some of those things I’d given up. But by then, it was too late to do anything about it. I don’t want you to give up something you’ll miss later.”

Rosso chewed his lower lip. “I miss my brother.” The words were nearly inaudible.

“He probably misses you, too. Maybe you can make up with him this afternoon.”

He shook his head again. “I mean I miss him being with me.”

Lady hesitated. “Did he push you away?”

“No. He’s not _there_ anymore.” The boy drew his limbs in tighter, hugging himself. “He’s always been with me, but now he’s gone.”

Lady shot a look of confusion at Nero, who had slipped back into the room. “What do you mean, gone?” Nero eased himself into the chair again. “He’s been here the whole time.”

“Not _here_. In the other place.” Rosso had shed his attitude of indifference and now looked to be on the verge of tears. “He was always with me in the house, but he’s not there anymore. He went away and left me alone. I can’t find him. I can’t feel him _anywhere_.”

“In… the house?” Nero’s eyes flicked involuntarily toward the kitchen, where he recalled a crayon drawing of Dante and Vergil’s childhood home stuck to the refrigerator door. “ _Oh_. I see.” Suddenly Rosso’s change in behavior made sense: All the time the twins had spent in close proximity, staying in the same room during the day and curling up together at night, must have mirrored the second life they’d lived in their dreams. Until recently, they had always been together in their childhood memories. Only when they recalled the events that had torn them apart, and their own feelings of isolation in the aftermath, had they begun to distance themselves physically.

Dante had once mentioned that they had shared a bedroom, growing up. Zaffiro had said they’d never been to school, so sleepovers or class trips were unlikely. It was entirely possible that until their mother died, the brothers had never spent a single night apart. No wonder Rosso was taking it hard.

Nero chose his words carefully. “You can… _feel_ where your brother is right now, can’t you?”

Rosso nodded. “Down the hall.”

“Could you feel where he was an hour ago? When we were at the antique shop?”

“No. He was too far away.”

“Well, maybe, in that other place you dream about, you and your brother are _just_ far enough apart that you can’t feel each other. I don’t think he went away on purpose. I think he… got lost. He’s probably just as upset that he doesn’t know where to find you. Have you talked to him about it?”

Rosso shook his head. “I don’t want to talk to him about the other place. It’s all different, now.”

If Dante had already reinvented himself as Tony Redgrave by this point in his life, Nero could only imagine just _how_ different. “Okay. But just because you got separated in the other place doesn’t mean you have to stay away from each other here, does it?”

Rosso studied the arm of the couch. “I guess not,” he mumbled.

“Wouldn’t it be better if you tried to go back to the way things were? It would give you somebody to play with during the day, when the other kids are at school. I think your brother might be feeling a little lonely since you’ve been avoiding him. Besides, maybe if you’re friends again when you’re awake, you won’t miss him so much when you’re asleep. You think it’s worth a shot?”

Rosso said nothing, but nodded slightly.

“All right. It’s almost time to eat, so why don’t you go wash up, and maybe you two can do something fun together after lunch, okay?”

The boy obediently departed for the bathroom. When he’d gone, Nero slumped back in the armchair.

“I’m impressed,” Lady said. “I’m exhausted just from watching you do it, but I am impressed that you managed to work out what was going on and fix it.”

“Save your praise until we see how long it _stays_ fixed.” Nero shook his head. “Man, this whole situation is crazy. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing half the time with _human_ kids. Throw weird demonic superpowers and a whole set of bonus memories into the mix, and I’m way out of my depth.”

“If so, your dog paddle is a far sight better than mine. You saw how well my attempt at establishing rapport went.”

“It went pretty well, from where I’m sitting. You got him to open up and talk about how he was feeling, which is more than I’d gotten out of him in the last week.” Nero threw a surreptitious glance at her before adding, “I didn’t know about your mom. I’m sorry.”

Lady smiled tightly. “Trish was right. We’ve all lost somebody.”

Nero pitched his voice low, so there was no chance of the boys overhearing. “She was killed by demons?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Lady stared hard at the opposite wall. “The man who murdered her used her as a sacrifice so he could gain demonic power.”

Nero swore under his breath. “What the hell is wrong with people?”

Her lip curled. “Someone always wants to rule the world.”

“But becoming a demon? That’s the kind of jacked-up shit the Order was doing. I’ll never understand why anyone would willingly give up their humanity to become some kind of monster.”

“Maybe because all the ones who do were monsters to begin with, even when they were human.”

“Not all of them.” Nero swallowed the bitterness at the back of his tongue. “Credo wasn’t. Not before the Order got into his head. I’d known him my whole life.”

“Right. I’m sorry, I forgot he…” Lady shook her head. “The Order misled a lot of people, and Credo just gave his loyalty to the wrong cause. But that’s different from someone like… like Arkham—” She flinched at the name. “—who was only after personal gain. He wanted to use Sparda’s power to become a god, and he didn’t care who or what he sacrificed to do it.”

“Sparda’s—” Nero’s jaw dropped. “He was after _Sparda_ _’s_ power? That takes a special combination of enormous balls and minuscule brain. How many pieces did Dante chop him into?”

“He survived his encounter with Dante, actually. And with Vergil.”

Nero blinked. “Wow. That’s… surprising. Who the hell was this guy?”

“Ah. Now that’s the twisted part.” Lady’s lips contorted in a wry smile. “Arkham was my father.”

Ice raced down Nero’s spine. “Shit.”

“As in ‘a real piece of,’ yes.”

“No wonder you—” He wondered if it would be rude to say _killed him_ when he’d only learned that much from Morrison’s letter. “—wanted him dead.”

Lady huffed a laugh. “That’s putting it mildly. I’ve never met anyone more deserving of four rounds between the eyes. He murdered his own wife, butchered innocent people in arcane rituals, destroyed part of a city, very nearly unleashed hell on earth, and left me with this.” She traced her index finger over the scar that ran half the length of her thigh. “I think he intended to bleed me out completely, but he missed the femoral artery by a centimeter. I was never anything more than another blood sacrifice to him.”

“Huh.”

Lady stared at him. “Huh?” she echoed. “I’d expected something a little more sympathetic.”

“No—sorry, didn’t mean to sound like I’d checked out or anything. You’re absolutely right, he sounds like an utter sack of shit who deserved worse than the clean death you probably gave him.”

“So why the ‘huh’?”

Nero shook his head. “I was just struck by how familiar a lot of that sounded. You know, destroying a city, hell on earth, inflicting life-threatening physical trauma on his kid. It’s like history repeats, or something.”

She shrugged. “Not terribly surprising, considering Vergil was working for Arkham when I first met him. He might have taken a few notes.”

Nero jerked upright. “He was _what_?”

“Well, he’d probably call it a partnership, but it’s pretty clear he was just being used. He dragged Dante into it, too. We all got our hides handed to us before we realized what was really going on.” Lady laughed softly. “You know, I suppose that’s the one good thing that piece of filth ever did. If not for him, I might never have met Dante.” She drummed her fingers thoughtfully on the arm of the sofa. “Which means _you_ might never have met Dante, considering I was the one who insisted he come to Fortuna. He was going to leave the Order alone until I pushed him.”

“That would have been a disaster. Without Dante kicking things off, I never would have found out what the Order was up to until it was too late. And Kyrie…” Nero glanced toward the kitchen, where he could hear Kyrie humming. If the Order’s plans had come to fruition, would she, like her brother, have been pressured into undergoing the Ascension Ceremony? He couldn’t bear to think of her mutated into something less than human. “It’s weird how stuff works out. I mean, I get that you don’t want to be grateful to your ‘asshole daddy,’ as Nico would say, but if you line up all the dominoes he set in motion, his actions ultimately may have led to thousands of lives being saved.”

“That doesn’t just balance out all the lives he took.”

“Didn’t say it did. Just that you guys turned it around, eventually.”

She nodded slowly. “You never know which way the dominoes are going to fall from any given action. But I suppose it is important to remember that some good can always come out of a tragedy.”

“Any ripple effect that lets me end up with Kyrie is a win, in my book. So far, so good.”

“Meanwhile I’m scraping out a dangerous living as a devil hunter instead of touring the world as a competitive gymnast.” Lady smiled, rueful. “Though there’s a lot less metallic Spandex in this line of work, so that might actually be a plus.”

“You’d have found another job by now, anyway. Don’t gymnasts retire by about age twenty?”

“The _good_ ones don’t. Though by my age I’d probably be coaching, and after spending a few weeks with your kids, I’m convinced I’d rather throw myself into a volcano than work with children full time. I mean, don’t get me wrong—they’re really good kids, and I like them a lot, but trying to keep their attention is _far_ more exhausting than killing demons.”

“You are not wrong.” Nero scrubbed his palms over his face. “Some days, hunting is pure stress relief for me. But don’t tell Kyrie I said that.”

“Don’t tell Kyrie what?”

Nero’s head whipped toward the doorway, where Kyrie was wiping her hands on her apron. “Kyrie! You know, you can be _very_ quiet when you want to.”

“Don’t dodge the question.” Her tone of mock severity was undermined by the smile pulling at her mouth. “What schemes are you two concocting in here?”

“We’re comparing family angst,” Lady said. “We’re thinking of starting a club for the children of homicidal psychopaths obsessed with gaining demonic power. We’ve got two members already.”

“Three, once Nico finds out,” Nero added. “Agnus _definitely_ fits the criteria.”

“Oh, good point. We’ll extend her an invitation.”

“I see.” Kyrie’s gaze swung between them. “For once, I think I’m grateful to be excluded.”

“You should be. Seems like you got the only nice dad in the whole bunch.” Nero stood and stretched. “Anyway, our gripe session is over. You need help in the kitchen?”

“If you define ‘help’ as ‘people to eat the food I’ve finished preparing before it gets cold,’ then yes.” She smiled and tipped her head toward the kitchen. “The boys are already seated. We’re just waiting on you.”


	37. Chapter 37

Toward the end of lunch, the telephone rang. Nero, who was sitting nearest, stretched up to answer it. Kyrie shot him a look, and he stood and stepped away from the table. She had rules about technology and mealtime, even if Nero didn’t see the point since the phone was literally within arm’s reach of the table. “Hello?”

“I’ve got some good news,” purred a familiar voice.

“Hey, Trish. What is it?”

“Well, it took most of a garden deluxe with extra cheese, but I got some of the answers you wanted. Better yet, I think Gigi is ready to talk. She’s not happy about being stuck in this hospital, and I think she’s finally caught on that she won’t succeed in escaping as long as I’m around.”

“Has she tried anything?”

“Oh, she’s tried.” Trish’s voice dripped self-satisfaction. “She didn’t get far.”

“I’ll bet. So you think she’ll talk to one of us?”

“I’m not an expert judge of human motivation, but I suspect if you can arrange to get her out of here, she’ll be willing to tell you anything you want to know. She knows she’s lost this war.”

“Sweet. We’ll be over this afternoon. Thanks, Trish.” He hung up and relayed the news to the table.

“Well, that _is_ good news,” said Lady. “One less thing hanging over us.”

Kyrie’s brow furrowed. “I’m not sure what we’re going to promise her, though. We still don’t have any place to house her, and I doubt she’s well enough yet to be handed over to the police. The doctor said it could be a couple of weeks before the bandages come off. She’ll need special care, wherever she goes.”

Nero dropped into his seat again. “She definitely can’t come here. That only leaves the orphanage, and I doubt they’ll be thrilled about one more resident. Especially _that_ one.”

“Trish did confirm that she’s a minor, though.” Kyrie tapped a finger against her lips. “I wonder how badly damaged that wing really is.”

“Which wing? The one they closed?”

Kyrie nodded. “There were a few private rooms in it. They weren’t used often; mostly for visitors, I think.”

“She’d still need to be under surveillance. You planning on moving Trish there? That’s a little far from the pizza supply.”

“Surely it wouldn’t be difficult to install a lock on the door. It’s at least worth investigating, isn’t it?”

Nero shrugged. “If you think Sister Benedicta will go for it, go ahead.”

“I’ll call her as soon as—” Kyrie was cut off by the trill of the telephone. Nero was mid-bite, so she stood. “I’ll get this one. Hello? Oh, Sister Benedicta! I was just about to—” Her expression grew serious, and her gaze swung back to the table. “Of course. I’ll send Nero right away.” Before the receiver even made it to the cradle, she was speaking over her shoulder. “Another attack at the orphanage. Go, quickly.”

Nero bolted from the table. By the time he’d retrieved Blue Rose from his bedroom closet, Lady was waiting for him at the base of the stairs, buckling on her holsters. “We can take my bike. It’ll be faster.”

Nero paused only to throw Red Queen across his back before swinging behind Lady’s motorcycle seat, and they roared the short distance to the orphanage in record time. Nero didn’t bother heading for the main entrance; as he approached, he could hear the demons in the courtyard behind the building. The side gates were kept locked, but he knew where a bench was set against the wall. It gave him the boost he needed to jump up the high wall, bracing his boots against the stone for a second leap that carried him over. As he touched the ground, Lady’s grappling hook clattered at the top of the fence, and she landed beside him a second later.

The demons whirled and stared at them, chittering in excitement, but Nero hesitated before engaging. “This isn’t right.”

“A bunch of demons attacking an orphanage? I should say not.” Lady tucked the grapple into place and slung Kalina Ann across her back. “But I assume you mean something more than the obvious.”

“When was the last time you saw demons like this?”

Lady took a quick inventory of the monsters surrounding them. “Last year, in Red Grave, some of them. Others I haven’t seen before.”

“Yeah. Not here.” Nero scanned the courtyard. There were a handful of Empusas like the ones he’d killed at the Qliphoth, something else that might have been related to a Basilisk but was cloaked in green flame, a skeletal humanoid wrapped in a robe of shadow, and a pair of enormous creatures that looked like goats with wings. There were no Scarecrows or Chimeras. Not even any Frosts. “None of these demons belong on Fortuna. Even when the Order was active, I never saw these here.”

The demons were taking a definite interest in them now, and one of the Basilisk-type creatures hissed as it crept forward. Lady drew a pair of automatic pistols. “Let’s sort it all out _after_ we kill them, okay?”

Nero swung into action, laying into the nearest not-Basilisk with Red Queen. The creature gave him a challenge; his blows glanced off its armored hide, and even Blue Rose’s high-load ammunition hardly seemed to affect it. Its aura of green flame seared his skin as it batted at him, and one of its fangs scraped a burning line across his forearm when he dodged an instant too late.

Nero bought himself a few seconds with a well-placed roll that carried him out of the line of the beast’s attack and used the time to snap a few explosive rounds into Blue Rose’s cylinder. When the demon came at him again, he leveled the revolver at its open mouth and fired. The burst knocked it back, and Nero followed up with two more shots at close range, then a lunge with Red Queen that speared the creature through its throat. With a final gurgle of hatred, the demon collapsed into a swirl of ash and smoke.

He risked a split-second glance at Lady, who had already put down one of the Empusas and was chasing after another, before the skeleton was on him. Again, Nero’s attacks were frustrated; his sword passed harmlessly through the shadow cloaking the demon and seemed to do no real damage to the bones beneath. The ghoulish figure carried no weapon, but a glancing touch from its hand sucked all the warmth from Nero’s body. “What the hell is this thing?” he shouted back to Lady.

Lady skewered the second Empusa with Kalina Ann’s bayonet and glanced over. “Looks like a Sap Wraith,” she called back. “Close your eyes and hold very still!”

Nero resisted the urge to roll out of reach of the demon and, against every instinct he possessed, squeezed his eyes shut. “If this thing grabs me, it’ll—” His words were cut off by an ear-shattering blast and a wave of flame across his face. He flung himself back and opened his eyes to see the Sap Wraith curling into vapor. “What the hell, Lady?”

She lowered the rocket launcher and shrugged. “Only thing that kills Sap Wraiths is more heat than they can absorb. It was either a missile or a grenade, and my aim is better with the missile.” Proving her point, she swiveled Kalina Ann beneath her arm and fired at one of the goat creatures creeping up behind her. The rocket tore through its leathery wing, and the beast bellowed in rage.

Nero massaged his ear, which was ringing from the close-range explosion. “You couldn’t have warned me? I would have gotten clear!”

“I needed you to stay put to guarantee a clear shot. If you’d moved, you could have ended up in my line of fire.”

That made a certain amount of sense, but it didn’t stop Nero from sulking. “You’re the one who gets to explain to Kyrie where my eyebrows went.”

“You’re welcome,” Lady sang, planting the bayonet in the ground and using the rocket launcher as a brace to execute a whirling kick to both goat monsters’ faces. As irritated as he was just now, Nero had to admit that Lady really _was_ a fantastic gymnast.

Nero channeled his annoyance into the fight, dispatching an Empusa by driving his sword through its thorax. By the time he’d cleared his side of the garden, Lady had finished off both goat demons and was casually reloading her pistols. “So. Summoned, then?”

It took Nero a few seconds to realize she was continuing their conversation from before the fight. “That’d be my guess. They sure as hell aren’t native around here.”

“Let’s look for evidence.” Lady began a circuit of the enclosed area, scanning the ground, and halted not far from where they’d previously found the Solomon’s noose. “Uh-oh.”

“What’s uh-oh?” Nero joined her.

Lady crouched for a better look at the intricate red-brown symbols painted on the stone walkway. The array was more complex than the previous summoning circles Nero had seen. “This isn’t some amateur fooling around. We’ve crossed into true enthusiast territory.” She rubbed a finger in a spot that was still damp and sniffed it. “Ugh, it reeks of sulfur. I’m sure this is demon blood. Whoever did this is playing for keeps.”

Nero knelt and touched a shallow circular indentation in the soil beside the walk. “Weird. I’ve seen this kind of mark before, too, in an old warehouse by the waterfront. It’s where Tonio was attacked.”

Lady frowned. “That’s odd. Could it have been made by one of the demons?”

“I guess it’s possible. I didn’t get a good look at their feet.” Nero stood and turned in a slow circle, scanning the perimeter for movement, but saw nothing out of place. “I don’t get it. Who would go to this much trouble to mess with the orphanage?”

“Well, we know who _didn_ _’t_ do it.” Lady stood and wiped her hand off on the hem of her shirt. “Gigi has been under Trish’s observation this entire time.”

“Damn, you’re right. I was hoping she was the key to everything weird that had been going on around here.” Nero holstered Blue Rose. “I’m gonna sound the all-clear and have a chat with Sister Benedicta. You coming in?”

“I think I’ll stay out here, if it’s all the same.” Lady flashed a wry smile. “Catholic school, remember? I’ve stockpiled enough disapproving looks from sisters in habits to last me a lifetime.”

* * *

Kyrie was sitting in the living room with both twins and a pile of mending when they returned to the house. To all appearances she was calm and collected as she greeted them, but Nero noted the tightness around her lips and the way her anxious eyes sought his. “Everyone’s fine,” he assured her. “We handled it.”

She nodded, her shoulders sagging a little in relief, and set aside the shirt on which she was replacing a button. “That’s good to hear. Come into the kitchen with me and I’ll fix you both something to drink.”

Rosso, sprawled in his usual place at one end of the couch, looked up from his comic book. “Can I have a drink, too?”

Nero knew the beverage offer was just an excuse for the grown-ups to be able to talk privately, but Kyrie rolled with the interruption. “ _May_ I have a drink,” Kyrie corrected.

“May I?” Rosso echoed.

“Yes, you may. Zaffiro, would you like one as well?”

Zaffiro looked up from the other end of the couch, where he was reading a book for the first time in a week. “Yes, please.”

“All right. I’ll bring you something in just a minute.” Kyrie led Nero and Lady into the kitchen and practically whirled on them. “What happened?” she whispered.

Nero didn’t want to worry her further, but everyone involved with the orphanage needed to know what they were facing. “Someone summoned some pretty nasty demons in the back garden. Tougher than the ones from before. Nothing we couldn’t handle, but potentially very dangerous to ordinary civilians. The sisters are going to keep the kids inside as much as possible until we know more.”

“Summoned? Again?” Kyrie clasped her hands at her diaphragm, the nervous singer’s habit returning under stress. “Who would do such a thing? Why?”

“We don’t know. Whoever it is, they aren’t playing around. It was some pretty advanced work.”

Mechanically, Kyrie retrieved two cups from the cabinet and poured juice for the twins. “I always knew there was a certain amount of risk in staying here, after what the Order did, but I always believed Fortuna’s _people_ were fundamentally good. Everyone here always looks out for each other, helps where they can. But for someone to do this… to target _children_ …”

“We don’t know what their goals are,” Lady countered. “And we don’t know for certain that it’s even someone from Fortuna. A lot of unsavory types showed up here to pick over the bones of the Order.”

“But it’s not the first time it’s happened, and it could happen again,” Kyrie sighed. “You’re the only hunter on this island, Nero. What if you aren’t nearby when they return?”

“I’m almost always around,” he assured her. “We’ll figure this out, like everything else.”

For a few seconds, the only sound in the kitchen was the gentle drum of Kyrie’s fingers on the countertop. “You know, I’ve been thinking this for a while, but especially after this has happened…” She turned and faced Nero squarely. “I think I should to learn how to use a gun.”

Nero just stared back for a few seconds while his brain tried to process this information. “No. No way. I don’t want you anywhere _near_ those things we fought today.”

“I don’t particularly want to be near them, either, but I’d rather be prepared for an emergency. I’m sure the sisters aren’t prepared to defend themselves from something like this. They’ve always called for the Holy Knights, or you, whenever there was a threat. What if you’re across the island, or on the mainland, and it’s just me and the children?”

“Kyrie, demons are faster and stronger than humans, and a lot of them can attack at range. If you’re close enough to aim accurately, they’re close enough to kill you before you can get a shot off.”

She frowned. “I’d still rather take that risk than have no defense _at all_.”

Nero tried to think of a counterpoint to that, but Lady spoke up first. “I think she’s right, Nero. If you’re going to keep a gun in your bedroom, she should _at least_ know how to handle and unload it safely. And I don’t think it’s a bad idea for her to learn how to shoot, either. Too many strange things have been happening around here, and we still don’t know who is behind them.”

“Blue Rose is not some starter pistol,” Nero pointed out. “She’ll snap your wrist if you’re not careful.”

“I don’t need to use Blue Rose,” Kyrie assured him. “I can’t imagine I would ever have your weapons at the orphanage unless you were there, anyway. I’m sure Nico could lend me something that’s more my size.”

“We can start you off with my nine-mil, if you like.” Lady patted one of the holsters strapped to her leg. “It’ll have a lot less recoil than anything Nero’s using.”

Nero raised his hands in surrender. “All right, if you both think it’s a good idea, I know there’s no point in arguing. Just promise me you won’t put yourself in harm’s way. Fighting back should be an absolute _last resort_. Life-or-death situations only.”

“That’s all I want it for. Believe me, I’m more than happy to leave the demon hunting to the professionals. I just think _someone_ at the orphanage should have a way to protect the children, in case of another attack.”

“Preferably more than one somebody.” Lady looked thoughtful. “You know, we could set up a group class and teach some of the sisters the basics. Then the orphanage would be better defended _all_ the time.”

Nero shrugged. “I can’t really see Sister Benedicta going for it, but I guess there’s no harm in asking. The worst that happens is she says no.” He snapped his fingers. “Oh—that reminds me! While I was there, I checked on the room for Gigi, and I think there’s one in the closed wing that will work. Sister Benedicta wasn’t thrilled about taking her on, but she said she’d allow her to stay for a few weeks, at least until her hands heal. Apparently some anonymous benefactor just made a cash donation to the orphanage, so she was in a good mood.”

“Oh, that’s a relief,” Kyrie sighed. “They really need the money. And at least Gigi won’t have to stay in the hospital indefinitely. And Trish won’t be stuck there, either.”

“We’ll give her the good news when we go question Gigi—assuming she cooperates.”

Kyrie nodded. “We can go as soon as you’re ready. Or—” She hesitated. “Who should speak with her? Someone will need to stay with the boys.”

“I’ll stay here,” Lady offered. “As a representative of the orphanage, Kyrie is the one with the leverage to get her released from the hospital, and I suspect the two of you can pull off a more convincing good cop/bad cop scenario if you need to.”

“We’ll hope that won’t be necessary,” Kyrie said. “Are you sure you don’t mind staying?”

“No, it’s fine.” Lady angled one ear toward the hall and listened for a few seconds. “Besides, it’s quiet right now. I’d rather get my babysitting hours in while they’re actually behaving.”

“They do seem to have made up,” Nero observed. “Maybe that talk with Rosso earlier helped.”

Kyrie nodded. “He extended an olive branch just after lunch, and asked Zaffiro if he wanted to help him put together a puzzle. Zaffiro wasn’t interested, but the offer seemed to help smooth things over between them. After that they both ended up on the couch, where you saw them.”

“I’m glad _something_ is getting back to normal,” Nero sighed. “Give me a couple minutes to clean up, and then we can go talk to Gigi.”


	38. Chapter 38

Gigi did not look particularly happy to see Nero and Kyrie when they arrived in the hospital ward, but she became considerably more cooperative when presented with the option of being moved out of the hospital for the duration of her care.

“We just need you to be honest with us,” Kyrie explained after she had made the offer. “If you answer our questions truthfully, we’ll do what we can to move you someplace more comfortable. All right?”

Gigi glanced between them, then gave a resigned nod. “What do you want to know?”

Kyrie seated herself in the chair Trish had vacated when they’d arrived. It was the only seat nearby, so Nero moved to lounge against the wall beside the window. “You told Trish you’re seventeen. Is that true?”

Gigi nodded. “Everything I told her was the truth.”

“That’s good to know.” Kyrie gave her a warm smile. To an observer, it would appear that she was playing the Good Cop role to perfection—though Nero happened to know that she wasn’t putting it on; kindness was Kyrie’s default. For that matter, he supposed he was a natural Bad Cop. _Teamwork_ , he thought wryly.

“Seventeen’s a little young to be hunting demons,” Nero put in. “You wanna tell us what made you go that route?”

Gigi shrugged. “Demons need killing.”

“Sure do, but most people leave that to the pros.”

Her expression darkened. “Sometimes the _pros_ do not do their jobs,” she snapped.

Kyrie flashed a look at Nero that warned him not to respond. “Did you… lose someone?” she asked, so gently it made Nero’s heart ache. “To the demons?”

Gigi looked away, but gave a terse nod. “My parents.”

“I’m so sorry.” Kyrie touched Gigi’s hand. “Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell us what happened? You grew up in Parma, didn’t you?”

She spoke haltingly at first, her voice gathering strength as she went. “My father’s business was in architectural restoration. After the earthquake, he wanted to come here and rebuild the city. He thought there would be good work here. Good for his… um…” Her brow furrowed, and she glanced at Kyrie. “ _Il ci-vu_?”

Kyrie echoed the syllables. “Oh! _Curriculum vitae_? It’s the same in English; we just say CV.”

“Ah.” Gigi nodded. “He thought it would bring him more work. My mother did not want to come at first, but she finally agreed, so two years ago, we came here.”

“That must have been a big change for you.”

Gigi shrugged. “It was not so hard for me. I had some English in school. But it was hard for _Mamma_. She did not speak any English. We spoke Italian at home, and I had to translate for her when she went shopping. She could not work without speaking English, and _Pap_ _à_ did not find as much work as he hoped, so we did not have much money. But we managed.” She looked down at her hands. “Then, last summer—the fifteenth of June— _Pap_ _à_ and _Mamma_ went out to celebrate their wedding anniversary. They liked to go to this little café with tables by the water. But that night, demons came into the city. The owner of the café called a demon hunter for help, but no one answered.” Her gaze shifted to Nero, and it was murderous. “ _Pap_ _à_ and _Mamma_ died there because you did not come.”

Nero swore under his breath. Last June, he’d been in Red Grave City, cleaning up the mess his own father had unleashed on an unsuspecting populace several times the size of Fortuna’s. He hadn’t known the demons had returned in his absence, or that anyone had been killed.

Kyrie made an attempt to defend him. “It isn’t his fault, Gigi. Nero was on another job then, on the mainland.”

Gigi shrugged. “That only shows why more hunters are needed. We can’t rely on one person to do a job if he leaves to work somewhere else.”

There was a certain amount of logic to her thinking—and if she truly blamed Nero for her parents’ deaths, it was no surprise that she’d sabotaged his business, vandalized the van, and even taken a few shots at him. Still… “There’s something I don’t get, Red. If demons killed your parents, you’d normally want to get rid of all the demons on Fortuna, right?”

Gigi lifted her chin. “Someone has to.”

“So what the hell are you doing _summoning_ them? Seems like Fortuna’s got enough problems without more people opening portals to the underworld.”

Her righteous confidence wavered a little. “That is just for practice. I summon a few so I can get better at killing them.”

“And what about the times when you didn’t?” Nero pushed off the wall to move a few steps closer to her bed. “Like that warehouse, when Lady and I had to wipe out a whole pack of Frosts before they escaped into the city, and we all almost got zapped back to infancy by the Nilepoch?”

“The warehouse was an accident,” she said hastily. “I did not know the big demon would come there.”

“Fine. What about that flock of Scarecrows at the orphanage?”

Gigi looked up sharply. “What?”

“A little over a month ago? Bunch of demons turned loose in the back courtyard?”

She shook her head. “No. Not there. I only practice in empty places, where no one will be hurt.”

Nero crossed his arms. “I found a Solomon’s Noose there. The same summoning sigil you’ve used everywhere else. In fact, I’ve never seen anyone _but_ you use one.”

“It wasn’t me,” she insisted. “Believe me, I would never go _near_ the orphanage!”

Her desperation didn’t seem feigned; in fact, she appeared legitimately horrified by the suggestion. “Then maybe you have some idea of who else might be summoning demons with the same technique.”

Gigi’s hesitation lasted only a second, but Nero spotted it. “I don’t know any other hunters,” she said quickly.

Kyrie had caught the momentary pause, too. “Gigi, please tell us anything you know—or even suspect. Someone has put a lot of children in danger by summoning those demons, and we can’t protect them if we don’t know who is doing it or why they’re targeting the orphanage.”

Gigi shook her head slowly. “But he wouldn’t,” she murmured. “Not the orphanage. He knows…”

After she fell silent, Kyrie cocked her head to one side. “Gigi?”

The girl’s shoulders slumped. “The only other person I know who can summon demons is my _patrono_. My… mentor. He taught me to do it. But he only wants to hunt down the bad demons,” she added hastily. “He wouldn’t hurt anyone. Especially not the orphanage.”

“Why not the orphanage?” Kyrie leaned forward, holding Gigi’s eyes. “What does he know that would keep him from harming anyone there?”

Gigi’s teeth clamped down on her lower lip, and she shook her head fiercely. Her internal conflict was obvious, but Nero could also see the lines of real fear in her expression. What was she so afraid of?

Kyrie looked away for a moment, thoughtful, and then her head snapped up. “Gianna,” she said suddenly. “That’s what Gigi is short for, isn’t it? You’re Gianna Benelli.”

Gigi’s expression turned wary, and her eyes flicked toward the window as though she might make a dash for it. There was little chance of her succeeding, with both of them in the room, but Nero took a step back toward the window as he tried to work out the logic behind Kyrie’s deduction. “Benelli? As in Scipio and Flavia?” Now that he looked, Gigi had the same red hair and petite build as the younger children…

Kyrie nodded. “Scipio doesn’t talk about his family, but Flavia mentions an older sister from time to time. That’s why you wouldn’t go near the orphanage—you were the one who left them there, weren’t you?”

Gianna’s shoulders sagged, and to Nero’s surprise, her lower lip began to tremble. “I had no choice. I tried to care for them after _Pap_ _à_ and _Mamma_ died—I did!—but I could never find enough food. Then when Flavia became ill, I got scared, and…”

“No one is blaming you.” Kyrie’s voice was soothing. “Someone your age should never have had to provide for two children all on your own. The important thing is that they’re safe and healthy. But why didn’t you go with them? The orphanage would have taken you in, as well. You all could have stayed together.”

Gianna shook her head. “My _patrono_ said he would only take me as his apprentice if I gave them up and trained full-time on my own. He said a devil hunter can have no family. That it is a distraction from the work.”

“Well that’s a crock of pure bullshit,” Nero burst, earning a disapproving look from Kyrie. “If we _didn_ _’t_ have family to protect, we’d have no reason to fight. Nobody’s in this business for the material rewards.”

Gianna blinked at him. “But… but you are wealthy from hunting, no?”

Nero stared back. “Wealthy?”

“You have a nice house, and a van, and fancy weapons. People pay you a lot for protection.”

Nero laughed out loud. “Man, I _wish_. I hate to shoot a hole in such a beautiful picture, Red, but I barely make enough hunting to keep food on the table. I built my own weapons, back when I had an actual salary from the Order, and the only reason we have a roof over our heads is because Kyrie inherited the house after her brother died.”

Gianna’s brows pushed together. “But Lor—but _il_ _patrono_ said that if I became a devil hunter, I could make enough money to send Scipio and Flavia to a good school in Rome, and…” She trailed off as Nero shot her a skeptical look. “He would not lie to me.”

“Sounds like this _patrono_ of yours has been telling you nothing _but_ lies,” Nero replied. “Who is this guy, anyway?”

Gianna’s head twisted quickly from side to side. “I am not allowed to say. He would be very angry.”

“Gigi, we want to help you,” Kyrie assured her. “I understand your loyalty, but whoever your _patrono_ is, he has clearly misled you about some things, and has put you in a very dangerous situation.”

She shook her head again. “He trained me. He gave me a sword and a gun, and taught me to kill demons.”

“Yeah, from the looks of things, his training is about as reliable as the rest of his advice,” Nero said. “Your aim isn’t awful for a novice, but your pistol grip is completely wrong, and I think the lack of safety training speaks for itself.” He gave her bandaged hands a significant look. “Your hand-to-hand skills are nonexistent; I took you to the floor with one hit, and I wasn’t even trying to kill you. And if the sword he gave you was that broken-down Caliburn I saw at the old customs house, it’s _way_ too big and heavy for someone your size. You should be fighting with something small and fast, not a blade that weighs half as much as you do. Not that you should be fighting at all,” he added quickly, in response to a stern look from Kyrie. “I just mean this guy hasn’t been training you seriously. And starting you out practicing on live demons? He could have gotten you killed. You’re lucky to be alive.”

Gianna’s mouth settled into a stubborn line. “It is not luck. I have worked hard to learn how to fight. I can kill demons as well as anyone.”

“You’ve knocked out a few low-level enemies. Now, I’ll admit, you seem to hold your own pretty well against things like Scarecrows. Maybe, with a couple years’ combat training and about twenty percent more muscle mass, you could take on something a step up, like a Blitz or Assault.” The blank look she gave him indicated that the names didn’t even register, and he wondered if her mysterious patron had bothered to educate her about demons at all. “But the demons you’ve been fighting aren’t even the most dangerous ones on Fortuna, let alone whatever crazy monsters might crawl through an open portal once you start screwing around with summoning circles. I’m talking demons the size of _buildings_. Things that can flatten a city block with a single attack.” Nero could see he wasn’t reaching her, so he moved to the foot of her bed and sat facing her. “Look, you want to avenge your parents. _I get it_. I’ve lost people, too. So has Kyrie. But going in half-cocked and getting yourself killed isn’t getting justice for anyone, and it sure as hell won’t help your brother and sister live a better life.”

At the mention of her siblings, Gianna’s hard expression melted into despair. “I can’t do anything to help them.”

“Not if you’re dead, you can’t,” he said frankly. “But there are a lot of options you haven’t explored. We can help you, if you let us. But you’ve gotta help us, too.”

Her scowl returned. “By betraying _il_ _patrono_. The only person who has ever helped me since my parents died.”

Kyrie touched Gianna’s arm. “Gigi, if your _patrono_ is as benevolent as you say, he has nothing to fear from us. But if it turns out he _is_ the one who has been summoning demons at the orphanage, he clearly doesn’t care about keeping Scipio and Flavia safe, and he needs to be stopped before someone gets seriously hurt. You understand that, don’t you?”

She nodded, though she looked miserable. “You promise he will not be in any trouble if he is not the one responsible for the demons?”

That wasn’t a promise Nero felt comfortable making; the man’s treatment of Gianna was problematic, regardless of whether or not he was behind the attacks at the orphanage. “We’ll talk to him first,” Nero said. “If he hasn’t done anything shady, we won’t have any reason to go after him.”

“If nothing else, someone with the knowledge of how to summon demons might know of others who have that ability,” Kyrie pointed out. “Even if he isn’t the one responsible, he may be able to help us find the person who is.”

“All right.” Gianna glanced between them. “But please do not tell him I told you. He will be very angry with me. It is meant to be a secret.”

“He won’t hear it from me,” Nero assured her. “What’s this guy’s name?”

Gianna chewed her lip. “I am not sure what his full name is. I only know what name he told me to call him, which seems like more of a title than a name. But he never explained it to me when I asked what it meant; he would only say very strange things.”

Kyrie glanced uncertainly at Nero. “What sort of things?”

“He talks about… What exactly did he say? ‘Wielding the true sword to strike down false destiny.’ His ultimate ascension to… something.” Gianna shook her head. “When he speaks of these things, I don’t understand what he means. He says a lot of things that sound religious, but I don’t think he believes in any church.”

Nero’s stomach had begun an uneasy crawl at the word _ascension_. Beside him, Kyrie had gone a shade paler than usual. “What do you usually call him?”

“Well… he allows me to address him as _mio signore patrono_.”

Nero huffed a laugh as he shook his head. “Wow. Real humble fellow, isn’t he.”

Kyrie shot him a look to silence him, and he saw that there was more anxiety than amusement in her expression. “And the name he asked you to use? The one you said was more like a title?”

Gianna glanced between them again. “He said his name was Lord Sparda.”


	39. Chapter 39

"Sparda,” Lady echoed, staring first at Nero, then at Kyrie. “She said _Sparda_.”

“The one and only.” Nero dropped into the armchair to force himself to hold still, though he felt more like running down the street in search of something to punch. The evening had been just as hectic as the rest of the day, what with securing Gianna’s release from the hospital, moving her to the orphanage, hastily installing a lock on the door of her room, rushing home to feed the children, and then trying to shuttle them off to bed early so the adults could talk through everything that had happened—but rather than wearing him out, the chaos had only set Nero’s nerves more on edge. “No word on why Gramps is recruiting clueless teenage girls to do his dirty work for him.”

“Definitely not his M.O.,” Trish volunteered from where she was sprawled on the couch. “From everything I’ve heard, he was usually a bit more direct than that. More the stand-up-and-stab-you-in-the-face-himself type.”

“It must be someone from the Order.” Kyrie was pacing the living room, unusually restless. “It _has_ to be. All that talk about wielding the true sword—that was a common phrase in Order doctrine. I heard it used over and over when I was in training to be cantor.”

Nero nodded. “Makes sense. I didn’t pay much attention to those sermons, but I remember Credo had some piece of regalia engraved with the words ‘true sword.’ It used to be mounted in a frame in his bedroom.”

“It was a gold belt buckle. A gift from Lieutenant Lauda when Credo became Supreme General, I think.” Kyrie paced another turn of the room. “But the Order is all but dissolved now, except for a few administrators who manage what’s left of the Order’s property. There isn’t even much of a religious presence here anymore. All the members of the High Council are dead, aren’t they?”

“As far as we know,” Lady said. “Dante killed Agnus, didn’t he?”

Nero nodded. “And I took out Sanctus myself. He seemed pretty dead when I was through with him, though considering Dante had already killed him once, I guess anything’s possible. For all we know, the Order higher-ups had backup clones of themselves stashed in a lab somewhere. I wouldn’t put _anything_ past Agnus.”

“None of the other Council members made it out of the building,” Trish added. “I checked. The only one who did was Credo, and he…” She glanced at Kyrie and hesitated. “Dante and I were with him.”

“But it doesn’t have to be someone from the Council,” Lady pointed out. “Nero’s clone theory aside, there were a lot of fanatics involved at all levels of the Order. It could be anyone who bought into the Sparda legend a little too deeply. Maybe they just couldn’t let it go after the Order’s collapse.”

“It is odd that they’ve waited this long to reveal themselves, though.” Kyrie drummed her fingers thoughtfully on the back of the sofa. “It’s been six years. Why haven’t we seen any evidence of this person before? Why would they wait until the past year to find someone like Gianna? Surely there were other people on Fortuna who held a grudge against demons for killing their loved ones.”

“I think that’s one of several questions we’re not going to get answered until we find this ‘Lord Sparda’ knockoff himself.” Nero slumped back in the chair. “And considering all we have is an alias, that may take some doing.”

Lady frowned. “Couldn’t Gigi tell you where he lives, or anything?”

Nero shook his head. “He always contacted her to tell her where to meet him, or where there were demons to kill. Apparently _he_ was the one monitoring our phone lines, not Gigi.”

“That makes more sense. I was wondering how a seventeen-year-old girl with no Internet access and no public library figured out how to install a hard-line wiretap.”

“Apparently he has a spread of other skills, too. He’s a shoo-in for the demons at the orphanage: Gigi said he used to take her to empty warehouses and things and summon demons for her to fight.” Nero’s expression darkened. “He was at ground zero when Tonio was killed. When the Nilepoch showed up, probably attracted by the demons he’d summoned, our guy just _left_. Didn’t even try to help Tonio.”

“Sounds like a real winner,” Lady muttered.

“Yeah. At least Gigi tried to shoot the Nilepoch, but when she realized her bullets weren’t having any effect, she panicked and ran.” Nero sighed. “Can’t really blame the kid.”

“I probably would have done the same, if none of my weapons put a dent in it,” Lady admitted. “Did Gigi share anything else about this ‘Sparda’ that might help us find him?”

“He’s apparently ‘middle-aged’ and has a bum leg.” Nero rolled his eyes. “Coming from a teenager, that means he could be anywhere between thirty and sixty.”

“The leg is something distinctive, though.”

“But there were enough people severely injured six years ago that it’s not unique,” Kyrie pointed out. “And we can’t exactly access the hospital’s medical records to narrow down the list of suspects. There are privacy rules.”

“Unless we broke into the hospital and stole the records,” Trish offered. Everyone turned to stare at her, and she shrugged. “What? I’ve been there overnight. Security is a joke.”

“We can’t violate thousands’ of people’s privacy just to find one man,” Kyrie chided. “Besides, it would take weeks to sort through all the patient records, and there’s no way of knowing if the man we’re looking for even _has_ a medical record there. There has to be another way.”

“Well, if he tries summoning something again, we can hope he leaves evidence behind,” Lady sighed. “The Solomon’s Noose is as basic as summoning gets. He has to be in contact with the circle to activate it, and with a bad leg, he can’t escape from an enclosed area like the orphanage courtyard very quickly. If we’re fast enough, maybe we can catch him in the act.”

Nero rubbed his eyes, wavering between agitation and exhaustion. “I feel like I’m at a dead end on every single front. We’re stuck waiting for the Nilepoch to show back up. We can’t do anything about getting Dante and Vergil back to normal until it does—and that’s assuming we can even kill the damn thing, and figure out some way to undo what it did to them, which may not even be possible, in which case we’re stuck waiting for them to grow up and get their memories back on their own. And God help us all when Vergil hits his Urizen phase the second time around. Meanwhile, there’s some random wacko posing as Sparda and summoning demons in the middle of town, and we don’t even know where to start looking for him. All we can do is wait and see if he unleashes another pack of demons somewhere, and try to trace that back to him.” He struck the arm of the chair with his fist. “I _hate_ waiting. I’m almost tempted to tell Trish to steal the hospital records just to have something to _do_.”

“There is plenty to _do_ , Nero,” Kyrie chided gently. “You have a normal life that needs living, a houseful of children who are depending on you, and doubtless a number of demons lurking around the island who will need hunted at some point. I’m worried about all of this, too—especially the possibility that an extremist is acting on some twisted version of the Order’s doctrine, and could be putting people in danger—but ordinary life doesn’t stop simply because a bigger crisis happens to arise.”

Nero sighed. “I know that. I just want to get things _back_ to normal, and I can’t do that until we knock out all these other things hanging over our heads.”

Lady’s eyes flicked between Nero and Kyrie. “For now, let’s do what we can to stay in top fighting condition—and for me, at least, that means a proper night’s sleep. Given everything that’s happened today, I think we could all do with some rest.” She glanced at Trish. “Or whatever passes for it.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Kyrie said. “We won’t find any answers fretting over these things tonight, when we’re stressed and exhausted. Let’s all get some sleep and come at this with fresh eyes tomorrow, all right?”

Trish stood and stretched before making her way to the front door. “I’m going to wander the streets a bit and see if I sense anything interesting. Who knows? I might get lucky and run into this ‘Sparda’ myself.” She flashed a predatory grin. “Maybe I’ll demand alimony and see if he gets the joke.”

Lady bid them good night and retired to the room she shared with Flavia, and Nero stared after her for a few seconds. “Do you think we should tell them?” he asked suddenly.

Kyrie blinked and glanced around the room. “What? Who?”

“Scipio and Flavia. About Gigi.”

“Oh.” Kyrie came closer and sank onto the arm of his chair. “I’m not sure. I think Flavia would be happy to see her sister again, but Scipio seems to have so much anger toward her for leaving them at the orphanage. And right now, we still don’t know how things will play out, or where Gianna will end up. Even _she_ doesn’t seem to know if she wants to stay or not. I’m almost afraid to tell them about her until we know if she intends to be a part of their lives again. It might be worse to get their hopes up, don’t you think?”

Nero nodded slowly. “Yeah, I get that. When I was a kid, there was a part of me that really wanted to find my parents, but another part of me was scared that if I did, I’d learn why they abandoned me, and… I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Maybe they had a good reason for giving me up, or maybe they just didn’t want me. And I knew that if I found them, there was a chance that they _still_ wouldn’t want me.” He shook his head. “That uncertainty is the worst thing.”

Kyrie kissed the top of his head in wordless sympathy. “We’ll spare them that. Let’s let Gianna decide when she’s ready to contact them.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Nero tried to summon the energy to stand, but now he felt utterly drained. “You know, it’s funny—I finally found one of my parents, and I still don’t have any of those answers.”

“Your father didn’t know about you, did he?”

“Apparently not.” Nero shrugged. “So I still don’t know why I was left on your doorstep.”

“Does it really matter?” Kyrie bent to kiss him again. “I’m just so, so thankful that you were.”

“Me, too.” He leaned into her for a moment, feeling the day’s stress and frustration began to melt away in the presence of her solid warmth. “Let’s go to bed.”

* * *

Nero snapped awake in the pre-dawn hours, unsure what had roused him. The house was silent, save for Kyrie’s even breathing beside him. As he looked around the darkened bedroom, his night-sensitive eyes picked up the warm haze of one of the downstairs lamps brightening the wall outside their door. After slipping carefully out of bed, Nero pulled on a robe and crept down the stairs to investigate.

The light was emanating from the living room. At one end of the couch, highlighted by the lamp’s glow, a tuft of tousled white hair was just visible. It was impossible to tell which of the twins it was until Nero moved further into the room and spotted the blue pajamas. Zaffiro’s knees were pressed against his chest, his arms wrapped around them so tightly that the flesh was white under the pressure. He was trembling visibly.

“Hey,” Nero said quietly, crouching in front of him, keeping his movements slow and obvious to avoid startling the boy. “What’s going on?”

Zaffiro lifted his gaze to Nero. His eyes were rimmed in red and hung with purple shadows. “I had a bad dream.”

Nero’s stomach clenched involuntarily at the memory of what horrors their previous dreams had contained, but he was grateful that this time, Zaffiro was at least still functional and speaking. Perhaps this nightmare hadn’t been so bad, or perhaps all their efforts to draw him out—the gentle guidance, the games, the violin practice—were beginning to help him work through the trauma. Nero moved to sit beside the boy on the couch. “You wanna tell me about it?”

Zaffiro’s chin settled back into the corral of his arms. “I… I dreamed I killed somebody.” The words were scarcely audible.

Nero controlled his breathing to avoid any reaction that might seem frightening or judgmental. He knew how quickly Zaffiro could shut down if he felt threatened in any way. What had Lady said to draw Rosso out after his nightmares…? “That must have been really scary. What happened? Can you tell me?”

Zaffiro’s eyes went distant and a little glassy. “I was in the city. The bad things were chasing me again, so I was hiding from them. A man saw me and asked if I was hungry. He said he would give me some food if I followed him.”

Nero waited through a long pause, scarcely breathing, before prompting, “And you went with him?”

Zaffiro nodded. “He took me to an empty building, but there wasn’t any food there. He tried to take my sword.”

Another long silence. “What happened then?”

The boy’s arms drew tighter about his knees, fingers digging into his sleeves as though seeking purchase.“I told him it was my father’s, and he couldn’t have it. Then he said he could have anything he wanted, and he grabbed my hair and… and I think he was trying to take my clothes, too.” Nero’s teeth clenched as he realized what the man must have intended, but Zaffiro’s brow was furrowed in a look of naive confusion. “He was hurting me, and he wouldn’t let me go, and I—I was scared…” Tears welled in the pale blue eyes. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I just wanted to get away.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Nero said automatically, still struggling to absorb the shocking tale. “You were just protecting yourself.”

“There was blood everywhere. I didn’t know what to do.” Zaffiro buried his face in his arms. “Then I woke up, but I could still feel it, like the blood was sticking to me.” He sniffed. “I know it’s past lights-out, but I don’t want to go back to sleep.”

“That’s okay. You can sit out here for a while. You want me to stay with you?”

The boy nodded. A tear escaped, leaving a dark circle where it fell on his sleeve.

Nero looked around for some kind of distraction to get the kid’s mind off his nightmares. “Do you want to read, or anything? I can probably get one of Julio’s books without waking him up…” Zaffiro didn’t answer right away, and when Nero glanced at him it was to see deep furrows cut between his eyebrows. “Something else on your mind?”

“It… it doesn’t make you a bad person, does it?” Zaffiro turned tearful, pleading eyes on Nero. “If I dream I hurt somebody? It doesn’t mean I’m bad?”

Nero put an arm around his shoulders and pulled him into a hug, in part to prevent him from seeing the emotions he knew he couldn’t keep from showing on his own face. “No. No, dreaming something doesn’t make you bad. Sometimes dreams are just dreams.”

But this one wasn’t, Nero knew, and it was horrific to imagine a young child being preyed upon, being forced to kill. Hell, that kind of trauma put _adults_ in therapy. For such a sensitive, introspective boy to face what he’d done alone, with no one to assuage his guilt, must have left scars so deep they could never heal. He must have felt so isolated, so afraid. How could he trust anyone, when any offer of help might conceal a lethal threat? What kindness could he hope for, if he’d thought himself guilty of a heinous act?

No wonder Vergil held human life so cheap, and had been willing to sacrifice so many innocent people to the Qliphoth. Nero’s early life hadn’t been half so traumatic, and there had still been days when he’d wanted to watch the world burn.

The small body leaning against him was growing heavier, and Nero knew that Zaffiro’s exhaustion from the nights of interrupted sleep would catch up to him soon. He moved the boy’s head to his shoulder, tugged one of Kyrie’s afghans over them both, and waited for morning to come.

* * *

Nero found it difficult, in the following days, to do as Kyrie suggested and focus on living his normal life. He wasn’t sure what “normal” entailed, anyhow; he doubted that much of his daily routine could be classified as the typical human experience, since it involved regular calls for demon extermination and periodic nights of interrupted sleep, calming one or the other of the twins as they struggled to come to terms with new and upsetting memories. He guessed the boys were approaching ten years old, now—still too young to be encumbered with the truth, but old enough to be suspicious of their own circumstances and any answers the adults in their lives gave them.

Rosso, unexpectedly, proved to be the more unmanageable of the twins. He had ceased answering to anything but Tony the week after their initial nightmares, and seemed to be approaching the double-digit mark with an attitude of cavalier independence. He now tested the household rules the way his brother had at a much younger age, though he exhibited more pure defiance than cool analysis, and constantly challenged Nero and Kyrie to enforce their punishments. So far Nero’s superior speed, strength and ability to extend his arm’s reach beyond that of any ordinary human had enabled him to keep Rosso from actually breaking out of the house or destroying anything valuable, but unlike his physical abilities, Nero’s tolerance for pre-teen shenanigans was not superhuman.

“He’s just stretching his wings,” Kyrie sighed as Nero ranted to her one afternoon. Their bedroom was filled with slanting sunlight as they folded the laundry, sharing a rare moment of privacy. Nero missed the early days of their courtship, when every moment they’d spent together could afford to be sweet and romantic, and wasn’t merely a respite from the blended chaos of foster parenting, devil hunting, or—in the case of Rosso and Zaffiro—a curious hybrid of both.

“The only thing he’s stretching is my patience,” Nero groused. “And if he keeps it up, I might have to stretch his miserable little neck.”

“Nero,” Kyrie chided. “You shouldn’t say things like that, even in jest.”

“Who’s jesting? He’d survive it, and it might make me feel better.”

She shot him a warning look, and he blew out a long breath. “Yeah, I know. I shouldn’t make cracks about using violence on the kids, even if the kid in question is my obnoxious-as-hell pre-adolescent half-human uncle.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Ugh. It’s been two months and it _still_ feels weird to say that.”

“All children go through a rebellious phase. It will pass, like everything else.”

“I’m not so sure. This is the most I’ve ever seen Rosso—Tony— _whatever_ the hell we’re calling him this week—behave like Dante. Real Dante. _Adult_ Dante, I mean.” Nero pitched a balled pair of socks into the dresser drawer with excessive force. “What if he never grows out of it?”

Kyrie leaned over to look at the pocket agenda she’d left open on her nightstand. “Can you survive it for three more days?”

“Maybe. I’m not so sure Rosso will, if he keeps mouthing off the way he did at breakfast. What happens in three days?”

She picked up the calendar and showed him a date circled in red ink. “According to your predictions, that’s when the Nilepoch is due to return.”

“Crap. Already?”

Kyrie laughed. “And here I thought you were counting down the days.”

“I must have lost count somewhere.” Nero sank down on the edge of the bed. “It has been a little crazy around here.”

“It always is.” Kyrie nudged him to one side to retrieve a shirt he’d inadvertently sat on. “Have you made all your preparations?”

Nero nodded. “Lady and Nico have been working on that all week—clearing out the lab, setting up barricades for cover. Apparently Nico was able to get one of the old geothermal backup generators running, so there’s electric light and everything. She said she was going to try to rig up some traps to slow it down, too.”

Kyrie looked skeptical at that. “I know Nico’s brilliant, but some of her inventions seem a bit…”

“Half-baked?”

“I was just going to say ‘dangerous.’” She touched his arm. “You will be especially careful, won’t you?”

“Believe me, I am not taking _any_ chances with this thing. I have no desire to revisit my diaper days.”

Kyrie forced a smile. “I’m sure you’d make an adorable toddler, but I’d rather not find out firsthand.”

“I’ll be careful.” He tugged her closer and kissed her. “Don’t worry.”

“It comes with the territory, I’m afraid.” She fidgeted with the nightgown in her hands. “Nero, if you do manage to kill the Nilepoch…”

He pulled back to give her a look. “Can we maybe phrase that with a little more confidence in my skills?”

Kyrie rolled her eyes. “All right, _when_ you kill the Nilepoch.”

“Better.”

“How exactly is that going to help Zaffiro and Rosso?”

Nero shrugged. “I don’t know for sure that it will. It’s a stab in the dark, but some demons have abilities that fade after they’re killed. Without knowing more about how this thing operates, that’s all we can bank on. But even if it doesn’t put them back to the age they should be, the Nilepoch’s gotta be stopped. As long as it’s alive, people will be in danger. Besides,” he added, “I promised Joe Panni I’d take it out. For Tonio.”

“I know. I know you have to fight it, and as worried as I am, I agree with you. I just wish we knew what to expect.”

“Yeah, me too. In so many areas.” Nero pushed to his feet and picked up another shirt to fold. “Even if everything goes the way we hope, if we kill the Nilepoch and Dante and Vergil are somehow restored, we still don’t know what the real outcome will be. Will they remember what happened? Will they remember being kids? Will there be any lasting effects from having their power drained by the Nilepoch?”

Kyrie assumed a thoughtful expression. “It will be strange, not having Rosso and Zaffiro around. I’ve gotten to know them so well as children, but I’ve hardly ever spoken to Dante, and I’ve never even met Vergil. I honestly don’t know what it will be like to meet them as adults now that I’ve spent the past two months watching them grow up from babies.”

“It’ll be weird no matter what. I mean, we’re hoping we can put everything back the way it was, but…” He huffed a laugh. “On the other hand, I can actually have a conversation with Zaffiro, which is more than I can say about Vergil, so I guess there’s something to be said for either outcome.”

“Perhaps things will be different after, this.” Kyrie smiled encouragement. “We should always hope for the best.”

“Yeah, well, any meeting between me and my old man that doesn’t end with somebody losing a body part is a step up from where we started, so…” Nero shrugged.

Kyrie reached over and squeezed his nearest hand, which happened to be the one he’d lost and regenerated. “How is Zaffiro doing now? I know you were downstairs with him again last night.”

“He still has some bad dreams, and I don’t think he ever sleeps through the night, but it’s a little better now that he and Rosso are bunking in together again. Maybe he can sense subconsciously that he’s not totally alone.” Nero shook his head. “I wish I knew more about how any of this sixth sense stuff worked.”

“I’m just glad that it does, even if we can’t fully understand it. There doesn’t seem to be anything else that makes him feel better.” She reconsidered. “Well, except for music.”

“Yeah, he’s all about that. We’re supposed to visit the shop again on Monday for another violin session.”

“Enjoy it while you can.” Kyrie’s smile was wistful. “If everything goes as planned on Tuesday, it could be the last time you’ll ever get to hear Zaffiro play.”

* * *

Kyrie’s words echoed in Nero’s mind all the way to the antique shop, and he made an effort to pay attention rather than letting his mind wander as it usually did during the practice sessions. Zaffiro’s playing had improved dramatically since he’d first begun practicing, and today he rendered a complex, bouncing melody that Nero didn’t recognize.

The proprietor, apparently, did. “Ah, Paganini!”

Nero wasn’t sure if that were a person, a title, or what the man was planning to eat for lunch. “Paganini?”

“The composer.” He moved to a bin of record albums and flipping through them. “A famous virtuoso, and something of a scandalous figure. He was rumored to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for musical prowess.” He held up a battered LP sleeve featuring a painting of a man holding a violin. Across the portrait was printed the album’s title: _The Devil Violinist_.

Nero laughed. “That’s strangely appropriate.”

“I must say, I’m impressed that your boy has mastered it already,” the proprietor went on, replacing the album in the rack. “From what I understand, it’s quite an advanced piece.”

“Yeah, well, this kid’s been full of surprises since the day we brought him home.” Nero watched Zaffiro play, fingers flying over the strings, body swaying with the rhythm of the notes, brow furrowed in concentration. Nero knew that a few of those creases would one day become permanent, cutting severe grooves into the planes of Vergil’s face, but at this age his youthful skin smoothed and stretched with each subtle change in expression. Would there be fewer lines on Vergil’s face now, Nero wondered, if he hadn’t been forced to endure such hardships in his youth?

All too soon, Zaffiro finished playing and placed the violin carefully back in its case. “Done already?” the shop owner asked in some surprise. They had barely been in the store for a quarter of an hour, and usually the boy played for at least twice that.

Zaffiro nodded, massaging his left hand. “That piece is… technically challenging.”

Nero noted the careful choice of words. It was something Zaffiro had been doing more often of late, taking care not to admit to anything that could be construed as weakness. He would no longer express that he found something difficult, or that he was tired, or that he wasn’t feeling well. Even saying his fingers were sore from playing a difficult violin piece was apparently too much of an admission. “It’s up to you, kiddo. I’m probably going to be pretty busy with work the rest of this week, so we might not get a chance to come back for a while.” _Or at all_ , Nero reminded himself.

Zaffiro cast another longing glance at the instrument, but even from a short distance away Nero could see the grooves pressed into the tips of the boy’s sensitive fingers. He wasn’t playing often enough to develop proper calluses, and given that the violin was still a bit too big for him, it was little surprise that his hands hurt after such a workout. “I think I’m finished playing for today.”

Nero quashed the little pang of disappointment that what might be their final visit had been cut short, but kept his tone bright as he thanked the proprietor and led Zaffiro back outside. Zaffiro automatically placed his hand in Nero’s, following the rules established when the boys had looked half the age they did now. It was strange, walking with him like this; Zaffiro wasn’t quite as tall as Julio yet, but in a couple of weeks, he would be.

In a couple of months, he would be taller than _Nero_.

So distracted was Nero by this revelation that he had lost track of their surroundings, his feet automatically following the path they always took home after visits to the shop. Only when Zaffiro tensed suddenly and clamped down on Nero’s fingers did he realize they had reached the empty lot they usually cut through to trim half a block off their walk. Nero oriented first on the boy clutching his hand, but within seconds he felt the shift in air pressure and a supernatural prickle at the nape of his neck.

He swore under his breath. He wasn’t carrying any weapons, and he could _not_ let Zaffiro get involved. “Back to the shop,” he ordered, swinging the boy around. “Run. I’m right behind you.”

There was a flash of panic in Zaffiro’s eyes as Nero released his hand, but he dutifully bolted back the way they’d come, and Nero stayed right at his heels. He didn’t like breaking contact, either, but if they were ambushed, he needed his arm free.

They reached the shop without incident, and Nero slammed through the front door with such force that the bell overhead snapped loose and landed halfway across the room. The shopkeeper looked up in alarm. “What on earth—”

“Telephone,” Nero panted. “Do you have a telephone? It’s an emergency.”

“Er, yes, right here.” The man lifted an old rotary model from behind the counter. “Are you all right?”

Nero ignored the question as he swiped out each digit of his home number, cursing the seconds lost as the dial clicked back into place. Eventually he heard the line trill, and prayed for a fast answer.

He scarcely allowed Kyrie to utter the word “hello.” “Kyrie! Is Lady there?”

Kyrie recognized the urgency in his voice and didn’t bother asking what was going on. “No, she and Nico left just after you did.”

“Damn it,” Nero hissed. “I need backup.”

“Trish just arrived; I’ll send her. Where are you?”

Nero described the location of the empty lot where he’d sensed the demons. “Have her bring my weapons.”

“Already on it,” Kyrie assured him. “What about Zaffiro?”

“Don’t worry; he’s safe.”

“All right. She’ll meet you there.”

Nero hung up and met the shop owner’s anxious expression, but there was no time to explain. “Sorry about this. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He turned and pointed at Zaffiro. “You, _stay_. You’ll be safe here.”

Zaffiro didn’t look convinced, but Nero couldn’t spend time reassuring him, either. He ducked out of the shop and raced back down the street at top speed, hurtling benches and fences rather than wasting steps going around them. In less than a minute he’d spotted his first target—one of the huge goat-headed demons they’d seen at the orphanage. Nero flexed the fingers of his right hand. “I really hope you’re vulnerable to punching,” he muttered, before launching his spectral arm toward the creature.

It turned out to be even heavier than it looked, and rather than reeling the demon in, Nero was hurled toward it when he tried to retract his arm. He tried to twist mid-air for a strike at its face, but he was accustomed to balancing the weight of Red Queen on his back, and overcompensated. The goat demon slashed at him as he flew by, and Nero narrowly avoided having his face and throat torn open by the thing’s wicked claws—though he didn’t manage to evade entirely. He felt a burning graze across the side of his neck, and the hood of his sweatshirt was dangling in tatters when his feet touched the pavement. “Okay, that didn’t go quite the way I’d planned,” he panted. “Let’s try something else.” His hand flashed out again and closed on a nearby lamp post, pulling him out of target range just as the goat demon lunged forward and gouged a deep furrow in the surface of the street.

Nero dropped to the ground and glanced around for something to use as a weapon, but apart from a wooden bench and a metal garbage can, there was nothing on this side of the street. There was no time to look farther afield; the goat creature had followed his escape and was already pumping its wings in preparation to charge.

“Here goes nothing,” Nero muttered as he grabbed the metal lid of the trash can. “Hey, horn-head! Go long!” He flung it as hard as he could toward the charging goat. Like a super-powered Frisbee, the lid sailed in a devastating arc and crashed directly into the goat’s face. The demon let out a gurgle of surprise as its head snapped back, and it tumbled backwards onto the pavement, wings tangled beneath it.

Nero couldn’t afford to waste a single second of his advantage. He bolted forward, leaped over the prone body, seized the goat demon’s head and slammed it as hard as he could into the road surface. It took a few strikes, but eventually the creature sagged and began to crumble into ash.

Just as he regained his feet, he caught a red blur in his peripheral vision. He flung himself into a forward roll an instant before the gleaming blade of a Fury slashed through the space he’d occupied. The demon seemed to wink out of space, moving too fast to see, and reappeared just above Nero’s position. Nero swept his spectral arm in an upward arc and caught the creature just below the jaw, launching it higher into the air. He caught its leg as it reached the apex of its flight and used its momentum to pull himself up off the ground; then, just as it began to descend, he twisted and slammed it back to the street as hard as he could.

By the time Nero’s boots touched solid earth again, the Fury had flipped itself upright and zipped to a new position off to Nero’s left. He barely had time to roll out of the way as it charged again, and though he avoided the blade on its forearm, he couldn’t quite dodge the barbed tail that it lashed at him. The armored spines ripped across his sleeve, drawing blood. “Shit!” Nero hissed. The cuts weren’t deep, but they burned with an unnatural fire. He hoped the creature wasn’t venomous.

The Fury spun with its arm extended for a backhand slash, and the glowing blade whizzed past Nero’s ear as he threw himself prone. Once again the tail followed, but this time Nero grasped it with his devil hand. The demon’s spines flared out defensively, and Nero scurried up hand-over-hand, using the barbs like the rungs of a ladder. As the Fury tried to claw at him, Nero brought his elbow down in a devastating blow to the back of its skull. It shrieked and vanished from beneath him, only to reappear a second later across the street. As Nero crashed to the ground, it fixed its luminous gaze on him and crouched for another attack.

This time, Nero waited for it to vanish again, then swept his arm in a broad arc around himself. His fist collided with the Fury just as it reappeared in space, knocking it far enough off balance that its aggressive swipe just missed him. He followed up with a flurry of punches, then leaped into the air, planted a boot solidly into the creature’s upper chest, and kicked off to fly over its head. When the demon twisted to follow him, Nero grasped it by the neck and swung it as hard as he could toward the nearest building. The Fury plowed head-first into a brick wall, knocking a hole in the masonry. As it struggled to free itself, a wobbling portion of the wall collapsed on top of its body, and its limbs went limp before flaking away.

There was no time for Nero to catch his breath before another fight was upon him. Attracted by the sounds of combat, another half-dozen assorted demons were gliding or lumbering toward him—and one of them, Nero realized, was a Sap Wraith. “And me without my rocket launcher,” he muttered. This was going to get ugly, _fast_.

The nearest demon was an Empusa, and Nero knew from experience that they were lightweight enough to throw around. He snatched the insect-like demon up by the back of its thorax and whirled it overhead, preparing to launch it into the next enemy, then hesitated. Why discard a perfectly good shield?

Nero began backing down the street, holding the squirming Empusa up before him and eying the row of approaching demons. He knew he’d have no problem defeating the Empusas barehanded, but the tough-skinned green Basilisks and the heat-absorbing Sap Wraith were another matter. One of the Basilisks leaped forward and took a swipe at him, but Nero swung the Empusa in between them. The Empusa shrieked as the Basilisk’s claws raked across its underbelly.

Meanwhile the Sap Wraith had floated in a semicircle to approach Nero from behind, forcing him to change his path and back toward the sidewalk rather than continuing down the street. The second Basilisk angled across the road to cut him off. Nero glanced around for another means of escape, but there was a tall building behind him and demons on all sides. He’d have to fight through to get out.

The Basilisk swiped at the Empusa again, and the lesser demon crumbled into ash in Nero’s hand. Before the surrounding demons could move in, Nero seized the energy at his core and released his full power. Ice-hued flame poured through his body, transforming his limbs and filling them with strength. He dove forward and struck the Basilisk with all his adrenaline-fueled fury, tearing into it with clawed fingers and wings. When it dissolved into flame and soot he moved on to the next, and before his energy was spent he had torn apart all but one of the demons surrounding him. He extended his wings, gathered himself for a powerful leap into the air while snapping his wings down for extra lift, and—

Searing cold stabbed through the left half of his body. Nero twisted to see the Sap Wraith floating beside him, one skeletal hand circling Nero’s wrist. Nero’s wings faltered as the numbness crept into his shoulder, and he plunged back to the street, pavement cracking beneath his uncushioned landing. He groaned and brought up his clawed hands, but his devil energy was all but drained, and his left arm felt sluggish and weak. Even as he tried to position himself for a strike, his inner flame guttered, and the glowing shell of his devil form faded back into trembling human limbs.

Nero staggered back to avoid the Sap Wraith’s reach, shaking his left hand to restore feeling. If this thing grabbed him again, he didn’t think he’d have the strength to break away. He needed heat. _Lots_ of heat. But where was he going to find something with the combustive force of a hand grenade in the middle of a quiet street?

Before he could begin to answer his own question, the Sap Wraith lurched to one side as though it had been jerked by a cord—but rather than a rope, Nero recognized the distinctive scrollwork of Red Queen protruding from between the demon’s skeletal ribs. Nero retraced the sword’s trajectory to find Trish standing atop the tall building just behind him. “Having a bit of trouble?” she called.

“You took your sweet time. There’s only one left!” Nero seized Red Queen’s grip and yanked with all his strength. The sword slid free of the fleshless form more easily than he’d expected, and he stumbled back a few steps.

“I figured you could use the extra practice.” Trish hopped off the building, landed effortlessly on the street, and in a smooth motion kicked the dented trash can lid into the air with one boot. “Hold this,” she said to the Sap Wraith, before ramming the lid into its torso. The metal jammed between two ribs, sticking in place, and the skeletal head angled down to ogle it with eyeless sockets. Trish raised a hand that flickered with compressed lightning, then grasped the edge of the can. The Sap Wraith bucked and thrashed as demon-enhanced electricity flowed through it, and soon the metal can lid glowed red-hot from the influx of energy.

Trish released the lid and stepped away, dusting her hands. “All yours. I wouldn’t dream of stealing your kill.”

Nero’s face split in a fierce grin, and he pressed Red Queen’s fuel release as he raised his sword. When the blade slashed down, it was wreathed in flame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The piece Zaffiro is playing is “Caprice 24” by Niccolò Paganini—the same piece played by V in his DMC5 air-violin taunt. (He had to learn it somewhere, right?) And the rumors about Paganini selling his soul to the devil were a real thing. Capcom really loves putting in those little character details...


	40. Chapter 40

Trish leaned forward to peer over Nero’s shoulder where he crouched on the ground. “Is this what you found before?”

“Sure looks like it.” Nero brushed at the red-brown symbols painted across a span of concrete in the empty lot. They smeared beneath his fingers, still fresh, and the acrid scents of sulfur and vinegar burned his nostrils. More demon blood. “I don’t know enough about summoning rituals to be sure this is the exact same setup, but _those_ are the same.” He pointed to a couple of coin-sized depressions in the dust surrounding the summoning circle. These marks were defined more clearly than the previous ones, filled with a distinct pattern of concentric rings.

She circled the array and knelt for a closer look. “Interesting. What are they?”

“No idea, but they keep showing up in the same places demons do. Lady thought they might be some kind of demon footprint.”

“Not that I’ve ever seen. Some demons have claws or hooves, but I can’t think of any that have… whatever that is. Unless it’s some sort of unusual high heel,” she added as an afterthought, rubbing a smudge from the toe of her own leather boot. “Some of us do wear shoes, after all.”

Nero pushed himself to his feet and wrenched Red Queen’s tip out of the gravel beside him. Trish had brought the sword, but not the harness he usually wore to carry it. “Well, whatever it was, it’s long gone. We’d better get back to the shop and pick up Zaffiro.”

Trish hung back. “Maybe I’d better not come along. He was scared of me last time we met.”

“Yeah, but it’s been over a week since then, and in their lives that’s an eternity. He’s gotta get used to you sooner or later.” Nero led the way toward the shop, and Trish followed with obvious reluctance. “So did you pick up any good gigs while you were back home?”

She shrugged. “Enough to keep Morrison from serving us with an eviction notice for another month. He still doesn’t know what’s actually happened to Dante and Vergil, just that they’re missing. Maybe he’d put our rent on hold if we explained the situation.”

“Well, if everything falls into place tomorrow, Dante and Vergil can explain it to him themselves.”

“I certainly hope tomorrow is the end of it. The commute is exhausting. It’s a good thing I don’t need to sleep; I had to leave the shop at one o’clock in the morning to make the ferry over.”

“If it’s too much effort to travel back and forth to see them, you’re welcome to take them home with you and raise them yourself.”

Trish shot Nero a look of disgust. “I’d rather lose another leg.”

“I kinda figured.” They reached the antique shop, and Nero opened the door carefully to avoid startling Zaffiro if he were still on edge. The bell he expected to announce his arrival did not ring, and with some chagrin he remembered what had happened to it. “Hello? Anybody home?”

The shopkeeper emerged from the back room, preceded by an ancient shotgun. He lowered it when he saw Nero. “Oh, it’s you. Your boy thought it might be…” The man’s eyes landed on Trish, who had neglected to don her concealing jacket, and widened. “Oh—er, he thought might be something else.” He looked back at Nero and frowned. “Are you all right? You’re bleeding.”

Nero checked his torn sleeve and rubbed at the cut on his neck. A little blood clung to his fingertips, but the wounds’ mild throbbing had vanished after he’d released his devil form. The same power that fully transformed his body, he’d discovered, also accelerating its healing—an ability he had thought he’d lost forever, along with his arm. “It’s nothing. Just a scratch.” Nero finally spotted Zaffiro lurking behind the shopkeeper. “Hey, kiddo, it’s safe now. You can come out. It’s just me and Trish.”

Zaffiro emerged from behind the counter, but kept Nero between himself and Trish. “Are they all gone?”

“Yep. Every last one. We can go home now.” He turned back to the proprietor. “Hey, thanks for looking after him.”

“Oh, he was no trouble at all.” The man smiled wistfully. “You’re very fortunate to have such a fine son. Sons, I should say.”

Nero didn’t bother to correct his misapprehension. “Look, I’m really sorry about busting in here before—”

“I understand.” He patted the stock of the shotgun. “It’s not the first time we’ve had to lock down during a demon attack. The back room is set up as a shelter, just in case.”

Relief that he wouldn’t need to explain the situation washed over Nero, but he was also surprised. “You’re more prepared than most. A lot of people around here seem to forget they’re living on a volcano, so to speak.”

“Literally and figuratively,” the man replied with a wry smile. “Though thankfully Mt. Lamina has been dormant for a few thousand years. The same can’t be said for all the demon activity, I’m afraid.” He nodded toward the sword Nero was attempting to conceal behind his body. “That’s an officer’s blade, isn’t it?”

Nero’s surprise redoubled, but he nodded. “With some custom modifications, yeah.”

“I thought so. I still have my son’s.” The shopkeeper’s smile was brittle. “It didn’t do him much good, in the end, but we were proud of him for earning it.”

Nero’s stomach clenched at the familiar weight of grief in the man’s voice. “What was your son’s name? I was in the Knights, myself; maybe I knew him.”

“Fidel Velucci. Same as mine.”

Nero felt a little shame that in all the weeks he’d been coming here, he’d never asked the proprietor’s name. “Sounds familiar… Was he a captain?”

“Squad captain, yes.”

“I think I only met him in passing, but I remember Credo mentioning a Captain Velucci from time to time.”

“Credo?” Velucci blinked. “The Supreme General?”

Nero nodded. “Yeah, we… I’m his brother-in-law.” That was easier than explaining the complex sibling/guardian/commander flux between them, even if Credo had died before Nero and Kyrie had formalized their relationship. “I lived with him, so I was always hearing random bits of Order business.”

“I see. I never had the honor, but my son always had words of high praise for the Supreme General. It seems he was the last remnant of the nobler days of the Order.”

“He certainly was that.”

There was a moment of silence, a mutual acknowledgment of the past and its losses, before Velucci spoke again. “So is this what you do all the time, now? Protecting the city from demons?”

Nero’s mind flashed unwillingly to Gianna’s parents, whom he hadn’t been able to protect. “I try. The Order left a big mess, and somebody’s gotta clean it up.”

“I’m glad you’re making the effort. I wish more people would, to be honest. Everyone wants business to improve, but we’ll never attract foreign investors or even tourists as long as there are demons running about. Some days I’m tempted to go out there and take a few shots at them myself.”

Nero tried not to grimace. “Don’t put yourself in any unnecessary danger. It’s best to leave the demon hunting to the pros.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do anything foolish. They’d have to come to me, anyway; I can’t walk as far as I used to.” Velucci reached behind the counter and lifted an elegant walking stick. “I had hip surgery a few months ago. Now I have to use this just to go between my house and this shop, and I’m afraid a cane is not much of a defensive tool.” He chuckled. “Well, maybe if I had one with a sword in it, like the one I sold to that gentleman this morning…”

Nero stared at the cane. “Hey, can I see that for a second?”

Velucci shrugged and handed the stick over the counter, and Nero flipped it to examine the rubber tip at the bottom. It was worn down with use, but a pattern of concentric circles was still faintly visible. “Trish. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Trish, who had wandered off to examine a case of vintage jewelry, joined Nero and looked at the tip. “If what you’re thinking is that the pattern looks exactly like those marks we saw earlier, then yes.” Her eyes flicked to Velucci, and her stance shifted. “Are you thinking what _I_ _’m_ thinking?”

“If what you’re thinking is that this is pretty good evidence that the person behind the summonings uses a cane, and that Gigi told us her mentor had a busted leg, then yeah.”

“Oh.” Trish relaxed her stance. “That wasn’t exactly what I was thinking.”

Nero followed her gaze to Velucci and rolled his eyes. “It’s not _him_ ,” he muttered. “He was here with us the whole time. There’s no way he could have gotten to the lot and back ahead of us.”

“You only asked what I was thinking, not to examine anyone’s alibi.” She shrugged and went back to peruse the wares.

Nero handed the cane back to Velucci. “Do all canes have that same kind of tip?”

“The ones I sell do.” He pointed across the room to a barrel with several walking sticks poking out of it. “I like this style because the ridges provide better traction, but all canes have _some_ kind of rubber tip.”

“I guess most of them do.” V’s hadn’t, Nero recalled, but then V had used his as much for skewering demons as for walking. “So there’s no way to track down who might own a cane that left that sort of print?”

Velucci shrugged. “Anyone could order the tips from the same supplier I do; it’s a well-known company. And I’ve sold a fair number of canes and walking sticks over the years. One just this morning, as I said.”

“Damn. There goes our only lead.” Nero noted Velucci’s perplexed look and shook his head. “Sorry—someone’s been causing a lot of trouble around town, and we’re trying to figure out who it is so we can stop him. We don’t have a lot to go on, except that he apparently uses a cane with this same kind of tip.”

“Oh, dear. Well, I wish you luck in your search.”

“Thanks. Speaking of which, we probably ought to be—” Nero glanced around and realized Zaffiro was nowhere to be seen. “Hey, didn’t I leave a kid around here somewhere?”

“I saw him go that way.” Velucci pointed to a U-shaped set of bookshelves squeezed into the far corner of the shop.

Nero rounded the shelves and found Zaffiro sitting cross-legged on the floor with a cloth-bound hardback open across his knees. “I should have known these would pull you in like a magnet. What’d you find?”

Zaffiro held up the volume. “It’s by the author Julio likes.”

“ _The Mysterious Island_ , huh? Pretty sure we already live there.” Zaffiro just blinked at the joke, and Nero shook his head. “We’ll have to ask Julio if he’s read that one. Maybe we can come back for it.” He took the book to replace on the shelf, and surreptitiously checked the price penciled inside the cover. It was a little more expensive than the books they usually bought, but perhaps they could save up for it. Julio would be turning thirteen in a few months, and becoming a teenager was a substantial enough landmark to merit a nice birthday gift. “Let’s go home. It’s way past lunchtime, and Kyrie’s probably pacing a trench in the floor.”

Zaffiro followed him toward the door, automatically putting his hand in Nero’s and staying a little closer than usual—not surprising, since they’d nearly stumbled into a demon ambush the last time they’d left the shop. Nero saw Trish still leaning over the jewelry case. “Trish, you coming?”

“In a minute.” Trish held up a tangle of chain and thread that she was attempting to pick apart. After a few seconds she succeeded, and held the item against her throat to admire in a nearby mirror. It was a choker of wide black lace, accented with a rhinestone-studded lightning bolt. “First, I need to make a purchase.”

* * *

Kyrie, lying in wait in the living room, ambushed them promptly upon their return. She maintained her composure long enough to send Zaffiro down the hall to wash up for lunch, then seized Nero and began stripping him out of his shredded sweatshirt. “Let me see how bad it is.”

“It’s not—ow! Kyrie, I’m fine! Let go!” He squirmed uselessly in her grasp. “Seriously, I’m not even hurt!”

“There is blood all over your collar!” She brandished the tattered hood of the sweatshirt, which she’d managed to whip off both his arms despite his resistance. “And look at these rips! This is not _fine_!”

Her knuckles were white where they clenched the fabric, and Nero checked his annoyance. She really was scared. “It got the cloth, not me. I had two little scratches and they’re already closed up. Look.” He angled his head to show her the line on his neck where the goat demon’s claw had grazed him. “Honestly, I’m okay. Everybody’s okay. My hoodie is the only casualty.”

Trish had stood glancing between them, and she used the pause in conversation to squeeze past them down the hallway. “I’ll just wait in the kitchen then, shall I?”

When she had disappeared into the next room, Kyrie pitched forward to rest her head against Nero’s shoulder. “You didn’t call,” she said in a shaky voice. “It’s been almost two hours and I hadn’t heard _anything_. Knowing you were out there all alone, without any weapons…”

Nero wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sorry. I was thinking about getting back to Zaffiro right away, and then I got sidetracked once we got back to the shop. I’m sorry for making you worry.” He kissed the side of her head.

Kyrie leaned into him. “I don’t mean to badger you. I just…” She shivered. “I’m so, _so_ scared about tomorrow, Nero. I can’t stop thinking about what could happen. Dante and Vergil barely survived, and if the Nilepoch even gets a lucky shot at you…”

Nero wanted to reassure her that everything was fine, that nothing was going to happen, but he knew such promises would be hollow. “I know it’s dangerous,” he said instead. “But we’re going in forewarned. Lady and Nico are over there right now, triple-checking everything they’ve set up. We’re going to have every advantage possible.” He pulled back and tipped her chin up so he could meet her eyes. “And believe me, I’m not gonna take any stupid risks. What I want most is to come home to you at the end of the day, so I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that happens. And I sure as hell don’t _ever_ want you to have to change my diapers,” he added in a lighter tone, “so I’m gonna be extra, _extra_ careful tomorrow.”

She laughed at that, and brushed a lingering tear away from her lashes. “All right. I’ll try not to worry any more than usual.”

Nero pulled her in for a tight hug. “You keep worrying at the usual rate, and your hair’s gonna turn white by the time you’re thirty.”

She returned the embrace. “At least then we’ll be a matched set.”

“We’re already a perfect match.” Nero kissed the top of her head and nudged her toward the kitchen. “Come on, let’s see if Trish has left any food in the house. I’m starving.”

* * *

Lady and Nico returned just as they were finishing their meal. Nero dismissed Zaffiro to join his brother, who was sulking in the bedroom in a fit of preteen pique—Kyrie had been somewhat vague as to the inciting incident, and Nero thought it better not to ask—and cleared the dishes to make room for the new arrivals at the table.

“We’ve got a lot to talk about, but first things first.” Nero began plating two more servings of pasta. “How’s the setup looking for tomorrow?”

“As good as can be expected.” Lady shrugged. “Our cover is as solid as we can make it with the materials we have on hand. Nico has expanded the sensor array, so we’ll know when it’s coming in. We’ve set some tripwires along the route, but I doubt any of the traps will inflict serious damage. Our best hope is that poison Nico synthesized from the Qliphoth roots. If it has any effect, it might slow the Nilepoch down enough to give us an advantage.”

“I also set up a high-voltage wire,” Nico put in, stretching across the table to take her plate from Nero. “Ooh, this looks yummy. Only enough battery charge for one hit, though.”

“Battery? I thought you had the generators running?”

“I got _one_ of ‘em runnin’, but it’s just a backup unit, an’ it’s not puttin’ out a lot o’ power. I left it chargin’ up the battery overnight. If the Nilepoch hits a direct line to the grid, it’s liable to short out the power an’ leave you all in the dark down there. But even one good battery hit’ll tell us if th’ bugger’s weak to electricity.”

“We can hope,” Trish said. “If it is, I can serve up enough power to knock a Gorgeron out cold.”

Nero nodded as he took his seat. “You sure did a number on that Sap Wraith today.”

Lady’s head snapped toward him. “What, _another_ one?”

“I said we had a lot to talk about.” Briefly, Nero recounted the events of the first half of the day, finishing with their discovery of the cane tips. “So I’d lay odds that _il patrono_ is our guy—or Lord Sparda, or whatever the hell he’s calling himself. I saw those marks at every summoning site.”

“But even if it is Gianna’s _patrono_ , I still don’t understand what he’s trying to accomplish,” Kyrie said. “Why would someone posing as Sparda summon demons at the orphanage? And it makes even less sense to summon them at that lot where you fought them today. There’s nothing significant around that area. There are some houses, a couple of stores, but a lot of it is in decline. I could see summoning demons in a populous area if his goal were mass destruction, or in an isolated area if he wanted to practice killing them like Gianna said she did, but why summon them in an out-of-the-way residential neighborhood? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

Nico nodded. “There’s a lot o’empty houses out that way, an’ almost nobody walkin’ around. I bet if Nero hadn’t been passin’ by, those demons might’a just wandered off without gettin’ noticed at all.”

“If Nero hadn’t been… Huh.” Lady’s fingertips drummed on the table, then stopped suddenly. “Hold on. _Hold on_. I’ve just realized something.”

“What?”

“I think we’ve been looking at this the wrong way.” Lady’s gaze swung from Kyrie to Nero. “We’ve been trying to figure out what this _patrono_ guy stood to gain, but what if this isn’t about _gain_ at all?”

Kyrie frowned. “I don’t follow you. He has to have some motivation for going to all this trouble, doesn’t he?”

“Oh, he has motivation. But I don’t think it’s to benefit himself.” Lady pushed her plate aside and tapped invisible bullet points on the table. “Let’s list everything we know this guy has done: We all get called out for a gig that doesn’t exist. While Nero’s gone, _il patrono_ breaks into your house and taps your phone line. He sets up a rival hunter and starts stealing Nero’s business. When Nero goes looking for the hunter, he sets up a pretty advanced summoning trap to try to kill him. While Nero’s dealing with that, his van tires get slashed. This guy also summons multiple waves of demons at the orphanage where Kyrie works, where Nero grew up, and where your kids spend time. Then he summons another batch of demons in an empty lot, in a neighborhood with no foot traffic, at the _exact time_ Nero is due to pass through on his weekly trip to the antique shop.”

Kyrie’s eyes were wide. “You think they’re targeting _us_?”

“Ho-lee shit,” Nico breathed. She turned to stare at Nero. “Who’d you piss off?”

Nero shook his head. “I have no idea. I can’t think of anyone who’d want to kill me so bad they’d attack the orphanage…” He trailed off. “Crap, you may be right. The first attack happened while I was _there_. The kids and I had gone to drop off the supplies Lady brought, remember?” He ran a hand through his hair. “This guy must have been _watching_ us. Waiting for an opportunity.”

Kyrie’s hand flew to her mouth. “The children,” she breathed. “They’re walking home alone from school right now. Do you think they’re in danger?”

Lady shook her head. “I think if he were going to target the children, he would have done it already. They’ve been to the park by themselves dozens of times. I think this is something personal against one of you.”

“It’s gotta be Nero,” Nico declared. “Kyrie’s too sweet for anyone to have a grudge against her.”

Nero shot Nico a dark look, but acknowledged her point. “The only thing anyone could have against Kyrie is her involvement in the Order, but even if someone had that kind of vendetta, there are people who were more significant in the Order’s hierarchy that they would target first. I can’t imagine anyone going to this kind of trouble just to hurt someone who sang a few hymns.”

“But I’m also the sister of the Supreme General,” Kyrie pointed out. “Targeting me now can’t hurt Credo, but if someone is this… misguided, willing to endanger innocent children over a personal grudge, they might lash out at anyone connected to the Order or the High Council without any logical reason.”

“From the pattern of the attacks, it seems more like they’re going after Nero,” Lady said. “But I suppose they could be hoping to kill him to hurt you.” She shrugged. “I guess we’ll have to wait until we track down this Sparda impostor and get answers from him directly.”

“And that’s going to have to wait until Wednesday at the earliest,” Nero said. “Tomorrow is Nilepoch day.” From the hallway, they heard the front door open and the chatter of young voices. “Sounds like the kids made it home okay. Official ban on all demon talk for the rest of the day.”

“Fine, but if you don’t want the demons talking—” Trish reached across the table with her fork and stabbed a meatball on Lady’s plate. “—you’d better be prepared to keep their mouths full, instead.”


	41. Chapter 41

Just before dawn on Tuesday morning, Nero once again found himself staring at the entrance to the mine, which was still cloaked in deep shadows at this hour. “You ready for this?”

“Probably not.” Lady adjusted Kalina Ann’s strap on her shoulder. “But we’ve done as much preparation as we can, and it’s not like we have any control over the schedule.”

“I’m ready.” Trish twirled Luce and Ombra before tucking them away at the small of her back. “I do wish I had a sword, though.”

“Couldn’t you have brought one of Dante’s spares?” Lady asked. “You just came from the shop.”

Trish shook her head. “His other Devil Arms won’t permit me to wield them. They bow to Dante’s will because he’s the one who defeated them in combat, but the only one that ever responded to me was the Sparda.”

“Strange. I wonder why that sword accepted you, when the others wouldn’t.”

“The same reason Dante did, I suspect.” Trish gave a humorless smile. “I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of my resemblance to Eva.”

Nero checked over his own equipment once more. He’d topped off Red Queen’s fuel reservoir that morning. Blue Rose was loaded, and he had plenty of spare ammunition. He had several Devil Breakers on his hip, and the newly-refitted Quicksilver glittered on his arm. Normally Nero wouldn’t take an untested weapon into combat, but he knew he might need the extra speed to evade the Nilepoch, and Nico swore she’d recalibrated the Quicksilver and capped its ability so it wouldn’t set him on fire again. Besides, it gave him an edge with that extra boost of energy, and between yesterday’s unarmed fight and rising at an ungodly hour this morning, he was more than a little tired.

“Okay, I’m all locked and loaded.” Lady slapped her last pistol into its holster. “Nico, are you coming down with us?”

Nico, slumped on the van’s running board with her lips dangling in a cup of coffee, shook her head. “Non-combatants are stayin’ out o’ baby-fication range. I’ll monitor the… uh, monitors from up here an’ give you a heads-up if I see anythin’ comin’.”

Nero frowned. “The radio won’t work underground, will it?”

“Who d’ya think you’re workin’ with? I piggybacked a relay on the… thingies.” She waved a limp hand toward the posts with the infrared receivers they’d installed weeks before and yawned. “Did we have t’be out here this early? Sun ain’t even up yet.”

“We don’t know what time the Nilepoch will show. We’re only guessing that it will be some time today based on its last appearance.” Lady stretched her arms overhead, then behind her back, loosening up. “Though personally, I hope it’s sooner rather than later. I don’t want to sit around waiting the entire day, or have to fight it late at night when we’re getting tired again.”

“Or hungry,” Trish added.

“No worries on that front,” Nero said. “Kyrie said she put some sandwiches in the fridge for us.”

“We’d better take those with us, then. We aren’t likely to come back up for a lunch break.” Lady climbed into the van, tilting Kalina Ann to avoid banging the weapon into the door, and returned a moment later with three small bundles neatly wrapped in brown paper. Each packet had the sandwich ingredients penciled on top and a small bottle of lemonade tied across it with a ribbon. “Kyrie is a marvel. You do whatever you have to do to keep that girl, Nero. You’ll never find another one like her.”

“That’s always been my number-one priority,” he grinned. “Okay. Everybody got everything? We good to go now?”

At the affirmative answers, Nero led the way into the mines. It was even colder in the damp underground passage, and Nero made the trek to Agnus’s lab as quickly as he dared. Like Lady, he was hoping the Nilepoch appeared soon—not only so they would all be fresh for the fight, but also because he couldn’t imagine what he would do with himself if forced to wait around in a single room for an entire day.

Lady and Nico had done extensive work on the lab over the past week. With one of the generators restored, a couple of light bulbs burned high on the far wall, casting a dim yellow glow over the area. Apart from the cage where the captive Riot paced, most of the lab’s fixtures had been dismantled, and a series of L-shaped barricades now ranged along each wall. The dense structures had been cobbled together from scavenged equipment banks and scrap material, and were positioned to provide cover regardless of which angle of approach the Nilepoch took. Metal grating from the floor of the second level had been pulled up to construct a chute inside the door, across which a series of tripwires stretched. The danger zones were marked clearly in paint with words like _BIG ZAP_ and _SICK BURN._

Nero pointed at the warning signs. “Nico’s work?”

Lady raised her hands in a gesture of innocence. “She was worried the Nilepoch would be able to read the warnings if we made them any more literal. I told her there was no evidence that the Nilepoch could understand English words, much less read them, but…”

“But Nico.” Nero shook his head. “I guess we should just be glad they’re labeled at all.”

Once they’d checked that the Riot was still secure in its cage, they arranged themselves in various nooks of the barricades and settled in to wait. Within a few minutes, Nero was pacing; within an hour, he was nibbling at his sandwich, more out of boredom than hunger. By two hours in, he had found a screwdriver and was amusing himself by dismantling the console that formed one section of his cover. “Man, this is some weird hardware. I wonder if Nico can do anything with these circuit boards.”

“She’s a gunsmith, not a computer technician,” Lady laughed from her own corner. “She does have an impressive array of skills, but they’re mostly analogue.”

“Wouldn’t most of that material be obsolete, anyway?” Trish was perched atop her own barricade, paging through a magazine she’d brought from the van. “I don’t really keep track of technological advances, but judging by all these ads for mobile devices, there seems to be a fairly fast turnover.”

“Not for us. When it comes to technology, Fortuna’s always a couple of decades behind the rest of the world. There’s not enough of a market for anyone to bother shipping state-of-the-art stuff out here, and it’s not like we have the infrastructure to support it anyway. I mean, we don’t even have a working mobile network. Closest thing we got to wireless is that radio phone in the van.” Nero ripped a handful of cables out of the console. “Huh. This copper wire is decent stuff. Might be worth salvaging—”

He was interrupted by the squelch of the radio handset he’d left sitting on the edge of the barricade. “…ell just hap…” The words died in a burst of static.

Nero dropped the cables and reached across to press the talk button. “Come again, Nico?”

Her voice burst through the static again. “…said, what the hell just happened down th…ensors blew ou…”

“Dammit!” Nero fiddled with the antenna. “I told her this wouldn’t work underground. Nico? You copy?” The only answer was incomprehensible squelch. He climbed out of his makeshift bunker. “I’ll go partway up the tunnel and see if I can get better reception.”

“Nero! Get back!” It was all the warning he had before one of Lady’s missiles sailed past his head and blew an impressive hole in the grate that made up the near side of the chute. As he reeled back from the explosion, he heard the sizzle of electricity and smelled ozone.

Recovering, Nero whirled and came almost face-to-face with the Nilepoch as it reared up on its spindly legs. The _BIG ZAP_ tripwire lay smoking at its feet, weak sparks flashing from the severed end of the cable. As he watched, it crossed the _SICK BURN_ line and bellowed as viscous yellow fluid dribbled onto it from above. Nero used the demon’s momentary distraction to dive back behind cover—and not an instant too soon, as a blinding beam of light swept across the room, destroying the outer layer of Lady’s barricade.

“Where the hell did it come from?” Trish called over the noise it was making. “None of the alarms in the tunnel tripped!”

“It probably didn’t come from the tunnel.” Lady slammed another missile into Kalina Ann. “It may have just _appeared_. Time jumps, remember?” She ducked around the corner of her cover and fired. The shot went wide of the thrashing creature, blowing a hole in a wall-mounted console behind it.

“Doesn’t matter where it came from, it’s here now!” Nero stretched up over his wall to put a few explosive rounds in the Nilepoch’s hide. It gave an irritated twitch, but the rounds didn’t seem to do much damage. “Damn, Gigi was right. Bullets don’t even put a dent in this thing.”

Trish performed an impressive flip over the front of her barricade, blasting away with Luce and Ombra. “Not even these scratch it!” She landed beside Lady and took cover again.

“Rhinoceros!” Lady shouted.

If they survived this, Nero promised himself, he would have a chat with Lady about her in-battle communication. “What?”

“A bullet will flatten on rhinoceros hide because it spreads the force out,” she called back. “But you can cut it!”

“What do rhinos have to do with—”

“She means use your sword!” Trish translated. She ducked instinctively as another deadly beam flashed overhead.

The moment the light faded, Nero dodged around the side of his barricade, drawing Red Queen. Opposite, Trish launched over the front of Lady’s bunker and veered around the far side of the Nilepoch. For an instant the creature’s attention was divided between them, which gave Nero a chance to activate the Quicksilver. Energy surged through him, and as the world seemed to stream to a halt around him, he twisted Red Queen’s throttle and aimed a blow at what should have been the soft spot behind the demon’s shoulder joint. His strike landed hard enough to rock the creature back a step, but the blade caught in the folds of its skin, dragging against it like a knife caught in taffy.

“The hell?” Feeling his sword’s grip warm from the friction, Nero returned to normal speed and wrenched Red Queen free. The edge of his blade was tarred with a velvet-black ooze. “It’s _sticky_!”

All light in the room seemed to gather in the Nilepoch’s mouth, and Nero scarcely managed to dive out of the way as the demon shot another blast through the space he’d been occupying. The beam struck the barricade behind him, and another layer of protective structure crumbled away.

From the other side of the Nilepoch, Trish launched into the air and—to Nero’s astonishment—hovered there. “Let’s see if you’ll cook, sugar,” she said, and _shifted_.

The back of Nero’s neck prickled as the wave of demonic energy struck him. He’d never seen Trish in her full devil form—hadn’t known she _had_ one—but found himself riveted by the sight of her wrapped in scarlet lightning, golden power streaming upward like flame, her eyes illuminated from within. From her hands she unleashed bolt after bolt of dazzling energy, which scattered over the Nilepoch’s skin and danced through the iridescent clouds pooling beneath it. The Nilepoch roared in rage and pain and spun to lash out at Trish directly, its bifurcated jaw snapping at her hovering feet.

Trish dodged easily, performed an aerial backflip, and landed atop the cage that held the Riot they’d used as bait. The halo of power surrounding her vanished, and she paused for a second to assess her enemy.

That second was all the opportunity the Nilepoch needed. Without the usual warning charge-up, the demon spat a slender beam of light at her. Trish lunged to one side, narrowly escaping the attack, but the beam struck the cage and shattered it. The Riot, agitated by the fight it had not been able to join, screeched and launched itself toward the barricades.

“I’ve got it!” shouted Lady, leaning sideways around the barrier to blast the Riot with a handgun before it could reach Nero’s position. “You deal with the big one!”

Nero turned his attention back to the Nilepoch, though he had no clue how to attack it without getting his sword stuck in the demon’s adhesive skin again. “Trish?” he called over the din. “Any ideas?”

“Not unless we can take it out from the inside,” she shouted back. “But with that thing in its mouth— _duck_!”

The Nilepoch spat another blast, swinging its head to strafe the room, and Nero had scarcely landed behind his barricade before the attack evaporated the top half of his cover. He flattened himself on the floor, eyes squeezed shut to avoid the near-blinding reflections that scattered from the surface of the Quicksilver as the light beam lanced directly overhead. “Shit! Trish, you still alive?”

“Somehow,” she called back. He heard her hiss in pain, though, and was not surprised when he leaned out and spotted her limping behind a pile of rubble across the room. The Nilepoch crept after her, head swiveling to seek out her hiding place. “Dammit, I just grew this leg back!”

Lady had paused for a few seconds to reload her pistols, and the weakened Riot hobbled toward Nero’s place of concealment, making a desperate swipe at him with its claws. “Oh, come on,” Nero growled as he danced into the aisle, easily dodging the attack. “Just get out of the way already!” He seized the Riot with his spectral arm and put a pair of shots from Blue Rose through its neck. With a final squeal, the demon collapsed into ash in his hand.

The action had taken his attention off their main enemy, and it wasn’t until Trish shouted, “Nero! Cover!” that he realized the Nilepoch had abandoned its search for Trish in favor of the more visible target. Nero activated the Quicksilver and dove toward the crumbling remains of his shelter, but he could see the ray of light already flowing toward him; even at advanced speed, he wouldn’t be fast enough to escape it. Instinctively, he threw up his arms to protect his face—

The beam struck the Devil Breaker’s mirrored surface and split into countless fragments, each blasting a tiny hole in whatever surface it struck. Lady yelped and curled into a corner of her shelter as lethal rays pierced the weakened barricade in front of her. The largest beam ricocheted off the main plate of the Quicksilver and struck the Nilepoch squarely in the face. Dazzled, it rocked back, head swaying faintly.

“Holy shit,” Nero breathed, eyes traveling from the still-incandescent Devil Breaker to the reeling demon. “Is it… did that _freeze_ it?”

“Stop staring and hit the damn thing!” shouted Trish.

Nero snapped out of his shock and charged forward, Red Queen in hand. The demon’s mouth hung slightly ajar from being stunned mid-attack, and he threw all of his power into a blow at the sphere of energy at the back of its tongue. As the sword connected, a sound like a thunderclap shook the room, and fragments of light scattered beneath his blade like shards of glass.

The injury dragged Nilepoch from its stupor. It reared up with a bellow and slammed its body into Nero’s, knocking him flying; then, with surprising agility for a creature of its size, the demon pivoted and bolted back through the chute and up the tunnel. By the time Nero scrambled to his feet, it had vanished completely.

Belatedly, Nero became aware of the burning sensation in his arm and realized the Quicksilver was smoking. He phased his arm to its incorporeal state and let the Devil Breaker slide off. It dropped to the floor, still glowing with heat, then cracked in two. Molten metal seeped from the edges of the break.

Lady joined Nero and gave a low whistle as she watched the weapon destroy itself. “Good thing your arm wasn’t in that.”

“Broadly speaking, I think it’s a good thing his arm _was_ in that.” Trish limped over to them. The leather over her left thigh was burned away, and the leg beneath seemed oddly shriveled. “If not, he’d either be toast or an infant right now. Or possibly a toasted infant.”

“All, that, and we didn’t even kill it,” Nero groaned. With the sudden loss of the Quicksilver’s energy, his body felt heavy and drained.

“We did inflict some damage, though.” Still favoring her wounded leg, Trish knelt for a closer look at the shards that had splintered from the sphere in the Nilepoch’s mouth. “What do you make of these?”

Nero squatted beside her. The pieces had faded from solid light to an iridescent transparency, like fragments of crystal. “No idea.”

“I wonder…” Trish used Luce’s muzzle to flick the tiniest shard toward herself, then extended a finger.

“Are you sure you want to touch that?” Lady warned. “We still don’t know the extent of that thing’s abilities.”

“Just testing a theory.” Trish brushed the glass-like sliver, which curled into vapor at the contact. A few seconds passed; then she hissed in pain and clutched at her injured leg.

“What is it?” Lady crouched beside her, hands extended to catch her if she collapsed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Trish said through clenched teeth. She took a couple of breaths, then relaxed. “Nothing. It worked.”

“What worked?”

Trish removed her hands to reveal her injured thigh—only now the limb appeared whole and unmarked. “I caught a glancing blow from that beam attack. Not enough to drain my power, but I think it absorbed some of the energy I’d poured into restoring my leg.”

“And you got it back just from touching that piece?”

“It would seem so.”

Lady’s eyes shifted to the shards. “That book we translated _did_ say something about the sphere holding the energy it absorbed.”

Nero glanced between them. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Lady met his eyes, but shook her head. “There’s a definite risk. We don’t know that it will restore them to their proper age. And even if it does…”

“It might not restore the rest of their memories. I know.” Nero scrubbed a hand over his face, which felt rough and grimy after the fight. “But the question is… is it worth the risk for a chance to get them back to normal?”

“We could always test it on Vergil first,” Trish said. Lady and Nero turned to stare at her, and she shrugged. “I’m just being practical. If we have to risk one of them—”

“Trish!” Lady snapped. “He may not be our favorite person, but he _is_ Nero’s father.”

“No, it’s cool, I already spent twenty-five years thinking I was an orphan. Why not make it official?” Nero rolled his eyes.

“Besides, we don’t know how much power these fragments contain,” Lady went on. “If we only have enough to restore one of them, I think Dante’s the logical choice. He’s defeated Vergil more than once, which means has the best chance of helping us kill the Nilepoch when it returns.”

“ _If_ it returns,” Nero pointed out. “We chased it off, but we’ve lost our bait, and we have no way of knowing when or if it’ll put in another appearance. Plus, it’s injured, now. All we can hope is that it doesn’t go into the city and start attacking more people.”

“We’ll just have to try to be prepared for any eventuality,” Lady sighed. “In any case, we ought to find some way to transport these fragments. I don’t think we ought to touch them directly.”

Nero automatically reached for his gun at the sound of approaching footsteps, but a second later Nico came tearing into view, radio clutched in her hand. “What the _hell_ ,” she panted, “is goin’ on down here?”

“Nothing much.” Nero pushed to his feet. His legs ached, and his arm twinged with the burns the Quicksilver had left. “Kicking demon ass. The usual.”

“Looks like you’re the ones got your asses kicked,” she snapped. “Huge ugly-ass demon thing ran right past the van, scared me half to death. Nobody answered on the radio, so I figured you all for dead.”

Nero glanced around for the handset, but the barricade where he’d left it had been destroyed. “Yeah, I think the radio got vaporized, along with most of our cover. Bad news is, the Nilepoch ran off and we can’t track it. But the good news is, we survived, and put the hurt on the bastard. Even got some souvenirs.”

Nico crept closer, her attention arrested by the glittering shards on the ground. “Ooh, are these from that demon? I bet I can make somethin’ really—”

Nero grabbed her hand as she reached for one. “Not this time. These are our one shot at getting Dante and Vergil back to normal. Maybe. If it doesn’t kill them first.”

Nico jerked her hand back. “Uh, right. How’s that gonna work, exactly?”

“That is a really good question,” Nero sighed. “For now, we’re gonna need that dustpan you keep in the back of the van.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Devil Trigger!Trish was probably the best thing to come out of DMC2, so _heck yeah_ I’m gonna have her bust out that form in a serious fight.


	42. Chapter 42

It was early afternoon when they returned to the house. Kyrie’s relief at their safe return was quickly eclipsed by concern as she took in their condition. “Everyone, into the kitchen,” she ordered. “I’ll get the first aid kit.”

“I’m not sure we need it,” Lady protested. “I’m not injured, just dirty. Trish can heal herself, and Nero—”

Kyrie seized Nero’s right hand and pulled his arm into view. The burns showed an angry red against his pale skin. “Kitchen. Now.”

Nero knew his wounds would heal on their own within a day, but he also knew better than to argue with Kyrie. While she couldn’t fight demons herself, he knew she saw caring for him as her contribution to his work. And he had to admit, there _were_ times it was nice to be fussed over, even if he had more pressing concerns just now.

Rosso and Zaffiro followed the crowd into the kitchen, curious, but Kyrie quickly shooed them away. “Can you two stay in the living room for a little while, please?”

Rosso leaned closer to peer at Nero’s arm. “Oh, you got hurt _bad_. What’d you do?”

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Nero assured him.

“Boys, _out_ ,” Kyrie said firmly. Rosso made a show of sulking, but they obeyed. Trish positioned herself in the doorway to keep watch for young eavesdroppers.

Kyrie waited until she’d cleaned and salved Nero’s burns before asking the obvious question. “Tell me what happened. Did you kill the Nilepoch?”

Nero shook his head. “We did some damage, but it got away.”

She looked up, anxious. “Does that mean it will be back in another thirteen days? Or…”

“We don’t know,” Lady sighed, dropping into a chair opposite Nero. “We don’t know if it will be back, we don’t know where, and we don’t know when. There are a staggering number of things we don’t know. First and foremost of which…” She set an empty lemonade bottle on the table. Within it glimmered the shards they’d collected from the Nilepoch.

Kyrie squinted into the bottle. “What are these?”

“We think they may be crystallized fragments of the power the Nilepoch stole from Dante and Vergil.” Nero kept his voice low despite Trish’s watchful eye. He didn’t want the twins listening in on any of this until they had decided what to do about it. “There’s a chance it could help restore them to their actual ages.”

“There’s an equal chance it could do something else,” Lady added. “It could do nothing, it could contain the wrong kind of power, it could overwhelm them and kill them.”

“It didn’t kill me,” Trish pointed out. “Admittedly, I only touched a small fragment, but my body only reabsorbed as much power as it had lost.”

“So calculating from a sample size of one, it appears that it could restore them.” Lady shook her head. “I’m not saying we absolutely shouldn’t try it, but I’m not sure I’m ready to risk Dante and Vergil’s lives without at least taking some precautions.”

Kyrie nodded. “There are the logistics to consider, too. We can’t unleash any kind of unknown power with the other children around, for example.”

From down the hall they heard Nico, who had been out refueling the van, enter the house and greet the twins. She joined them in the kitchen a moment later and immediately began scavenging for food. “That sandwich was great, Kyrie,” she said. “But I’m still a mite peckish. Do you mind if…?”

Nero rolled his eyes. “Of course the one who wants more food is the one who was sitting on her ass in the van all morning, and _not_ the three fighting tooth and nail with a killer demon.”

Nico scowled back at him, “I can’t help it if I get hungry!”

“It’s a shame that pizza place doesn’t deliver out here,” Trish commented. “I could really go for something with extra cheese right now.”

“Ooh, that sounds yummy!” Nico brightened. “I could go pick up a couple o’ pizzas.”

“Is food all you people think about?” Nero shook his head. “Fine. Go feed yourself. We’ll decide on the twins’ fates without you.”

Nico looked over at him in surprise. “You mean I get a vote? I kinda thought that was all up t’you, it bein’ your family, an’ all.”

All eyes shifted to Nero. “I… thought it would be a group decision,” he managed. “I mean, you two have known Dante and Vergil a lot longer than I have, and Kyrie’s got a good point about logistics…”

“I don’t think it needs to be all-or-nothing,” Kyrie said gently. “Let’s all discuss it, and maybe we can come to a consensus without forcing any one person to make the call.”

Nico edged toward the door. “I don’t really have an opinion, so I’ll, uh, go get that pizza.”

“Fine.” Nero waited until he heard her open the garage door before rolling his eyes. “I guess it’s easier to say ‘I told you so’ if you didn’t take part in the decision-making process.”

“I think she has a point.” Trish finally left the doorway to sit at the table. “Of all of us, her relation to Dante and Vergil is the most tenuous, and she has the least experience with…” She waved her hand toward the lemonade bottle. “The vagaries of demonic power. If she doesn’t wish to be involved, I don’t see any reason to insist on it. It’s not as though she has any great insight into what’s going on. We’re all flying blind here.”

“We certainly are.” Lady picked up the bottle and examined the shards. “In any case: We have three fragments, of varying size and unknown ability. What do we do with them?”

Kyrie gave a thoughtful hum. “The first question seems to be, do you think it’s worth exposing Dante and Vergil to something with unknown consequences, even if it’s the only way to restore them to adulthood?”

“I don’t think it’s the only way,” Nero said. “At the rate they’ve been growing, it seems like they’ll eventually recover on their own. They’ve aged about nine years in, what, three months? So if they keep that up, they’ll be back to normal within a year.” He sighed. “But as much as I hate to admit it, we just about got our asses handed to us today. If the Nilepoch comes back, I don’t know if we’ll be able to kill it without their help.”

“And if the Nilepoch returns, it will likely be much sooner than a year from now,” Lady added. “It’s probably still out there even now, since it didn’t succeed in absorbing any demonic power to jump forward in time. If we’re lucky, it will find something else to feed on and stay away from the city, but I don’t think we can count on that.”

Trish leaned back in her seat. “So we gamble with Dante and Vergil’s lives in order to have a chance of protecting the people of Fortuna.”

Kyrie glanced between them. “Is that something you’re willing to do?”

“I know what Dante would choose,” Trish said quietly. “It’s what he’s always chosen.”

Nero snorted. “Somehow, I have the feeling that’s not the same choice Vergil would make.”

“Not if you put it in those terms,” Lady said. “But if you told him there was a demon more powerful than himself out there? He’d absolutely want to go fight it, just to prove you wrong.”

“Oh, definitely,” Trish agreed. “We’re talking about the prize specimen who challenged the lord of the underworld to a duel, after all.”

Kyrie blinked at that, and Nero recalled that she was the only one who hadn’t heard the story of Vergil’s defeat and enslavement. Perhaps, once everything settled down, he could fill her in. “So it sounds like we’re all leaning toward trying to use the shards to restore them. Am I reading that right?” Nero glanced around the table. “Kyrie? You haven’t stated an opinion yet.”

“I’m not really comfortable with it, but if there’s no other way to stop the Nilepoch…” She bit her lower lip. “I’ve always hated those hypothetical ethics questions about sacrificing a small number of people for the greater good, but I suppose that’s the real dilemma we’re facing here. I just wish the ones at risk of being sacrificed weren’t children in my care.”

“They’re not really children,” Trish pointed out. “And they risk their lives every single day, doing what we do.”

“I know. I know they wouldn’t even be in this situation if they hadn’t gone to hunt the Nilepoch in the first place. I just… I don’t want it to _win_.” Kyrie’s hands, folded on the table, clenched until her knuckles were white. “If they die now, after everything we’ve done, if they become victims of the Nilepoch like the others you found… I don’t want these past three months to have been for nothing.”

Nero covered her hands with his. “Hey. You’re always telling me that even if a kid is with us for only a short time, we become part of each other’s lives, right? That even the little things we do with them matter? _Nothing_ is gonna take away these last few months. No matter what happens from here on out, that time means something. Rosso and Zaffiro will always be a part of our lives.”

She gave a tight nod, but the tension in her hands remained. “How does it work? The… crystals, or whatever they are.”

“I don’t understand the mechanics of it,” Lady admitted. “Trish? What happened with you?”

Trish shrugged. “I touched one of the pieces, and the energy just seemed to enter my body. Undoing the damage wasn’t a pleasant experience, but at least it was brief.”

“But you were only healing from a small injury. Given the extent to which Dante and Vergil’s bodies will have to recover, it could involve a lot more physical stress.” Lady tipped the lemonade bottle to one side, considering the shards within. “I think we need to start with just the smallest fragment and see how it goes. Too much change at once could be devastating.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Nero said. “Which one do we give the first piece to?”

Silence fell across the table as they all eyed each other, unwilling to state a preference. “We don’t know how much power these fragments contain,” Lady said at last. “There may not be enough to restore both of them. If we want Dante to be able to fight the Nilepoch, we should start with him. With… Tony, I mean.”

“But if something goes wrong, and Dante is…” Trish hesitated. “…unable to fight because of it, we’ll be no better off. If we start with Vergil, we can see how the restoration works, and then know how to proceed with Dante.”

Lady rubbed her eyes. “Trish, I know you want to be sure Dante is safe—and so do I—but we can’t just treat Vergil like a guinea pig.”

“At the risk of saying aloud what we’re all pretending not to be thinking: Dante is the one whose safety _matters_.” Trish held up a hand to forestall Lady’s protest. “I’m not saying we don’t care about Vergil, but the truth is, we mostly care about Vergil because _Dante_ cares about Vergil, and we care about Dante. More importantly, Dante cares about _humanity_ , and Fortuna and a lot of other places wouldn’t be here today if he hadn’t stood between them and the demonic forces bent on their destruction—whereas historically, Vergil has spent most of his life _being_ that destructive force. If our entire reason for doing this is to protect humanity from the Nilepoch, we need to ensure that Dante comes out in fighting condition.”

“And what if there isn’t enough power contained in these fragments to restore both of them?” countered Lady. “If we divide it between them, and Dante ends up stuck as a fifteen-year-old kid with no combat skills, are you going to send him to fight the Nilepoch anyway?”

“We should let them decide.” Kyrie’s voice, uncharacteristically sharp, cut across the table and silenced both of them. “If we’re prepared to sacrifice those boys on the altar of the greater good, the _least_ we can do is give them a say in who goes first. We’ll explain the circumstances as best we can, and they can decide for themselves whether or not they’re willing to take the risk. If their characters are as you described them—if Dante truly wants to protect everyone, and Vergil is truly competitive enough to take on any challenge—then one or both of them will jump at the chance. But you can’t decide their fates by playing favorites, or waging games of strategy. They’re _our family_ , and both of them matter to us!”

Kyrie’s hands were trembling, and Nero tightened his grip on them. “Kyrie’s right. It’s not our call. They may look like kids for now, but their lives don’t belong to us. They have to walk into this willingly.” He attempted to dispel the tense mood with a shrug. “Besides, you know Dante would never forgive us if we threw Vergil under the bus in order to keep him safe, and Vergil would be _seriously_ pissed that we gave Dante better odds against the Nilepoch than him. I’d rather just let them flip a coin and settle it between themselves than have to explain why we picked one or the other.”

“I guess you’re right about that.” Lady admitted. “So. Who draws the short straw and has the fun of explaining all this to them?”

All eyes gravitated toward Nero, who sighed. “Fine, I’ll do it. But I think it should just be me and them. They’ll be under a lot more pressure if they have four adults staring at them, expecting them to make a decision.”

Kyrie nodded agreement. “The other question is, when? We have the other children to think about. I don’t think we should experiment with these shards near them, especially since we don’t know how it will affect Rosso and Zaffiro physically. I hate to even think it, but if something _does_ go wrong, it could be traumatic for the rest of the children to witness it.”

“I agree, though I’m not sure where else we could take the boys.” Lady drummed her fingers on the table as she thought. “I guess there are a lot of abandoned buildings around the city, but I’d prefer to be someplace with a working telephone, in case of emergency. And preferably indoor plumbing, in case of a long wait.”

“We could always go back out near the mines in Nico’s van,” Trish suggested. “It doesn’t help with the telephone, but it has the advantage of isolation.”

Lady frowned. “But do we really want to take these fragments back to where we know the Nilepoch is running loose? For all we know, it can sense them, and the last thing we need is to be attacked again while Rosso or Zaffiro is with us.”

Nero twisted to look at the calendar Kyrie kept on the wall. “There’s a long weekend coming up, isn’t there?”

“Sort of,” Kyrie said. “This Friday is a conference day for the teachers, so there’s only a half-day of school. The children will be home by noon.”

“So… what if we take the _other_ kids out in Nico’s van?”

“Take them where, exactly?”

Nero shrugged. “Out camping, maybe? Or to one of the coastal parks? It would give them all a change of scenery for a couple days, which is something they haven’t had in a long time. I’ll stay here with whichever one of the twins wants to go first, and that way we have the whole weekend to deal with any fallout if it doesn’t go as planned. But we’ll be well away from where we left the Nilepoch, and there’s a phone _and_ plumbing here.”

Kyrie considered it. “I suppose if we all sleep in the van, it wouldn’t cost much. But we don’t normally leave the city without you. Will we be safe from demons out there?”

Nero glanced between the other two women at the table. “Trish can go with you.”

Trish looked appalled. “You want _me_ to spend three days trapped in a van with the small humans?”

“It’s only two days. I know Lady’s had more practice corralling the kids, but you’re the one who can actually sense demons incoming. Plus, you don’t sleep, so nobody will have to trade off watches during the night. I’d feel better having you out there. And it’s not as though you’d be trapped in close quarters with the kids,” he pointed out. “You can sit on the van roof the whole weekend, for all I care.”

“Except for making s’mores, of course,” Kyrie added with a smile. “You’ll want to join us for that.”

Trish’s eyes narrowed. “What are those?”

“Delicious,” Nero said. “You make them over a campfire. They’re this gooey, melted…” He saw the interest in a new food discovery kindling in Trish’s eyes. “You know what, I’m not gonna spoil it for you. You can find out for yourself.”

“Fine.” Trish leaned back in her chair. “I can be bought.”

* * *

Before long, Nico returned, arms laden with a stack of pizza boxes. “They was havin’ a special,” she explained as she transferred her burden to the kitchen table. “Figured Kyrie deserves a night off from cookin’ once in a while. These’ll stay hot in th’oven until the kiddies get home.”

Nero thought he detected a trace of apology in her voice, and it certainly wasn’t like Nico to spring for a family meal. Perhaps she felt guilty about running out on their previous conversation. “Thanks, Nico.”

The scent of oregano and pepperoni filled the house, and in a matter of seconds, Rosso was leaning around the doorjamb. “Is that for snack time?”

“That’s for dinner. Nico’s brought us all a treat.” Kyrie set the oven to a low temperature and began transferring the food to a baking sheet.

Rosso’s tongue ran over his lips. He hadn’t taken his eyes from the grease-stained boxes. “Can we have some now? I’m hungry.”

“You can wait another hour. The others will be home soon.”

“Actually…” Nero glanced between Kyrie and Rosso. He didn’t like countermanding her when she’d already said no, but placating Rosso with food might make him more settled and attentive. “The boys can split a slice, can’t they? While we have that talk?”

After a second’s hesitation, Kyrie nodded. “I suppose that won’t be enough to spoil their dinner. Go fetch your brother, Tony.” When he’d gone, she retrieved two plates and cut one pizza slice in half. “Are you sure you want to do this now?” she asked Nero.

“There’s no advantage to waiting. And we need to plan for the weekend.”

Rosso raced back into the kitchen, dragging Zaffiro, who looked mildly annoyed at being pulled away from his reading. Rosso scrambled into the chair beside Trish, who watched with amusement as he fixated on the pizza Kyrie was holding.

“Some things never change,” Trish murmured before standing. “Well, I think that’s our cue. We’ll leave you to spring the question.”

Zaffiro edged away from Trish and took his seat only when she and Lady had left the kitchen. “What question?” he asked warily.

Nero waited until Kyrie had served each boy his portion of pizza and left, giving Nero a nod of encouragement. “We, uh, need to talk about something important,” he began.

Rosso’s mouth was almost visibly watering. “Can we eat while we talk?”

“You can eat while you listen. Slowly,” he warned, as Rosso began to cram the entire slice into his mouth. Reprimanded, Rosso sank his teeth into the tip of the triangle and wrestled with the melted cheese.

Zaffiro nibbled at his slice with more reserve, and swallowed before speaking. “What’s the important thing?”

Nero stared down at the table, wishing he’d taken the time to work out how best to explain the situation before jumping in blind. But then, planning ahead had never been part of his skill set. “Okay, this is gonna be a little hard to explain…” He struggled for a few seconds before amending, “Nope, it’s gonna be almost impossible to explain. So you’re just gonna have to go with me on some of this.” He drew and expelled a deep breath. “I know you two dream of another place at night. Another city. A place where you had a house, right? And… your parents?”

Rosso’s chewing slowed, and Zaffiro set down his pizza before they nodded in unison.

“Right,” Nero continued. “See, those dreams… they aren’t really dreams. Not normal ones, anyway. They’re memories. That’s why you both dreamed about the same place, and why it all felt real to you, because… because all that really happened. A long time ago.”

Zaffiro sat very still, but Nero could see his mind working. “How can we have memories that happened a long time ago?”

What could he tell them? That they were really middle-aged men who had had more than forty years of their lives stripped away? “Um. Okay, you know the bad things you told me about, from your dreams?” To Nero’s relief, Zaffiro’s only reaction was a nod. “Well, a few months ago, a _really_ bad one attacked you and your brother. It hurt you both pretty badly. You don’t remember it because it also stole all your memories of the time before you came to live with us.”

Rosso frowned as he licked the last of the pizza sauce from his fingers. “How could something do that?”

“Uh… Magic.” Nero braced himself for expressions of disbelief, but the boys seemed to take that explanation at face value. Perhaps their childhood memories had included enough unexplained phenomena that they already accepted the existence of the otherworldly. “You’re older than you think you are, and you had a lot more memories before that demon—the bad thing—took them. But here’s the problem: The demon that attacked you came back, and now it’s hurting other people. Lady and Trish and I tried to stop it, but we can’t do it without some help.”

Zaffiro was watching Nero intently, but Rosso’s gaze wandered to the half-eaten slice of pizza on his brother’s plate. After a few seconds, Rosso’s hand darted toward it. Without taking his eyes from Nero, Zaffiro slammed his fist down on his brother’s fingers. Rosso gave an indignant yelp and jerked away.

“Hey!” Nero snapped. “Knock it off, both of you.”

Zaffiro scowled at the reprimand. “He tried to take my food.”

“He wasn’t eating it!” Rosso rubbed his hand, though Nero could tell he hadn’t sustained any significant injury. “Why can’t I have it, if he doesn’t want it?”

“Quiet.” Nero glared from one twin to the other. “This is _serious_. What I’m about to tell you is going to make a big difference in your lives, and depending on what you choose, you might never get the chance to eat pizza again. _Ever._ So listen up.”

That got their attention. Zaffiro’s posture grew even more rigid, and Rosso sat still and fixed wide eyes on Nero. Nero would have laughed, had his heart not been thundering with anxiety. _It figures that pizza is the thing that finally gets through to him_.

“Before you had your memories taken away, both of you… knew how to fight the demons. If you had those memories back, you could help us stop this thing before it hurts anyone else.” Nero picked up the bottle with the iridescent shards. “These are pieces of the demon that hurt you. They _may_ contain some of your memories, but we don’t know for sure. If you touch one of these pieces, there’s a chance you’ll get your memories back, but…”

Zaffiro’s eyes flicked from the bottle to Nero’s face. “But it could hurt us?”

“Yeah. It could. It could even kill you. We don’t have any way of knowing. We don’t even know if there’s enough pieces for both of you, or just one. So it’s up to you whether or not you want to try it. Get your memories back so you can help us, but risk getting seriously hurt, or stay the way you are now and be safe. It’s your choice. There’s no right or wrong answer.”

A crease formed between Zaffiro’s eyebrows. Rosso chewed his lower lip and looked down at the table. “We’re supposed to help,” he murmured, and Nero was reminded of what he’d said when he was only half this size, when he’d tackled a bully in the park to protect Flavia. “We’re supposed to stop bad things from hurting people, as long as we don’t hurt anyone more. Isn’t that what ‘least harm’ means?”

“Yeah, it is. I’m glad you were listening when Kyrie explained it.” Nero’s smile faded and he leaned forward, catching Rosso’s eyes. “But none of us are going to ask you to do something this dangerous. If you want to help, even though you could get hurt, you can. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. It’s fine with us, either way.”

Rosso frowned. “But you said if we don’t help you, you can’t stop it.”

“I did, but…” Nero shrugged. “We’ll just have to think of something else.”

Zaffiro peered intently at the bottle in Nero’s hands. “And there’s only enough for one of us?”

“We really don’t know.” Nero replaced the bottle in the middle of the table and leaned back. “Even if there is enough for you both, we’d only let one of you try it at first, until we see…” He swallowed, but there was no sugarcoating the truth at this point. “Until we see whether or not it’s safe.”

The furrow in Zaffiro’s brow deepened. “And… we could die.”

Nero sighed. “I can’t promise you wouldn’t.”

The boys were silent for a long time. Rosso stared at the shards, apparently deep in thought, while Zaffiro’s furtive gaze flicked from the bottle to his brother. At last Rosso seemed to come to a decision. “Bad things… have to be stopped,” he said reluctantly, extending a hand toward the bottle. “I guess I—”

Zaffiro’s hand closed on his brother’s wrist. “I’ll do it.”

Rosso stared at him, wide-eyed, and Nero tried to read his expressionless face. “Are you sure? You seemed even less keen on the idea than your brother did.”

“I’m sure.”

Nero wasn’t convinced. “Why?”

Zaffiro’s eyes narrowed. “Does it matter? I’ve said I would.” He ripped off a mouthful of the now-cold pizza, his lip curling at the texture of the congealed cheese. For a moment Rosso seemed about to speak, but then, uncharacteristically, he shrank back in his seat.

From the front of the house came the sound of a door and excited voices, and Nero knew the time for discussion was over. “All right,” he sighed, pocketing the bottle. “I guess that’s the decision made.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was a brief moment when I thought, “Wait, are s’mores an appropriate food item for the DMC universe?” and then I remembered Nero’s quip about “I’m bringin’ the fire!” and knew that toasted marshmallows _had_ to get mentioned at least once.


	43. Chapter 43

The next two days passed in a blur. Nero helped Kyrie and Nico make preparations for the camping trip, leaving Lady and Trish to patrol the city for signs of the Nilepoch. By Friday morning they had still found no trace of the demon. Nero wasn’t sure whether or not to feel relieved by its disappearance.

Meanwhile, the van had been rigged out with foam mats and sleeping bags and stocked with simple camp foods. Nico emptied her mobile workshop of the more dangerous tools, though she locked a pistol and some ammunition in a dashboard compartment. “Just in case,” she assured Kyrie as they finished loading the van. “I ain’t gonna take it out unless we need it.”

“I certainly hope we don’t.” Kyrie glanced at Nero. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Kyrie, you’ll be safe with Trish. And the kids will have a great time. They’re really looking forward to it.”

“I know. I just wish you were coming with us.”

“Me, too. I’m jealous of all the s’mores you guys are gonna eat without me.” Kyrie rolled her eyes at that, and Nero kissed her forehead. “When all this is over, we’ll plan another trip for all of us to go on together, okay?”

“All right.” Kyrie gave a wan smile. “Is there anything else you and Lady need me to do before we leave? I can make some food, or…”

“Kyrie.” Nero put his hands on her shoulders. “It’s _two days_. Even if Lady only knows three recipes, we can add that to the three things I know how to cook, and we can still eat something different for every meal. We’ll be fine.”

“An’ if all else fails, there’s always pizza,” Nico pointed out.

“Careful.” Lady emerged from the house with a stack of folded blankets wedged between her arms and chin and began feeling her way down the steps into the garage. “You say that word loud enough, and you’ll summon Trish and Tony. They’re just in the living room.”

“Speaking of whom, I should make sure Tony has everything packed. We’ll need to leave as soon as the other children get home from school.” Kyrie squeezed past Lady and disappeared into the house.

Lady deposited the blankets on the van’s long bench seat. “I think that’s everything on the list. Nero, are we all set for Operation Adultification?”

He raised an eyebrow. “You come up with that name all by yourself?”

She shrugged. “It was either that, or ‘Project Turn-A-Reasonably-Nice-Kid-Into-Someone-None-Of-Us-Really-Get-Along-With-But-We-Need-For-Practical-Purposes.’ Take your pick.”

“You’re not wrong there.” Nero sighed and let his eyes wander to the door Kyrie had closed behind her. “I hate being forced into this. If we’d just killed the damn Nilepoch, they could have stayed kids until they grew out of it on their own.”

“But we didn’t. We tried, and we barely scratched it. I don’t like the risk any more than you do, but we need Dante on this.” She leaned back against the van door. “And as much as I hate to admit it, probably even Vergil.”

“Hey, maybe he’ll be nicer this time around,” Nico put in. “Like, what if he just gets bigger, but doesn’t get the same personality back? It’d just be like Zaffiro grew up, with his new memories an’ all, an’ he wouldn’t be all creepy an’ angry like Vergil was before. Then everybody’d get along better, right?”

Lady’s brow furrowed. “As much as I’d like to retrofit Vergil’s personality, I hope that’s not what happens. We all want Dante back the way he was. Memories and pizza addiction and financial ineptitude and all.”

“And if we’re going up against the Nilepoch, we’ll need Vergil’s combat skills,” Nero added. “Zaffiro wouldn’t have that kind of ability.”

Nico shrugged. “Neither did V, I guess, but he seemed t’do all right.”

“Yes, well, V had a whole collection of pet demons to do his fighting for him,” Lady pointed out. “And human or not, V apparently had Vergil’s memories, which is more than Zaffiro has right now.”

Nero scarcely heard the two women as they continued the conversation. He knew, intellectually, that they were really all the same person—Zaffiro, Vergil, V, Urizen—but he had never consciously noted the similarities between the boy he’d watched growing up these past few months and the enigmatic stranger who had led him into the Qliphoth. The love of books they had in common was obvious, but they also shared a certain sensitivity of nature—a fondness for poetry; a love of music—and a devious, analytical mind that examined every situation for a tactical advantage. Zaffiro’s sly smiles were virtually identical to V’s, and even the haunted look Zaffiro had worn in the wake of his nightmares mirrored the fear V had let slip through in rare moments, as when he’d been cornered by Malphas.

Now that he thought about it, Zaffiro seemed to reflect far more of V’s personality than of Vergil’s. Nero had liked V, so far as he knew him, but had never been able to fully reconcile him with the harsher characteristics Vergil had displayed once restored to his true self. Had V been an echo of the man his father _should_ have been? If Zaffiro had been able to grow up free of Vergil’s horrific memories, which man would he have become?

He was abruptly jolted out of his introspection when Nico’s fist slammed into his upper arm. “Yo! Earth to Nero!”

Nero swore and recoiled from the impact. “What the hell, Nico?”

“Ya done zonin’ out on us?” She scowled and pushed her glasses higher on her nose. “I said the kids just got home! C’mon an’ help me put the rest o’ these Devil Breakers away ‘fore they come out here to load their stuff.”

Nero sighed and scooped up a box of weapons. Whatever might have been, whatever Vergil _might_ have become, wasn’t worth dwelling on. Their decision had been made. One way or another, in a few hours’ time, the boy called Zaffiro would be gone forever.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, the van eased out of the garage, the faces of its excited occupants pressed against the windows. Nero and Lady waved until the vehicle disappeared around a corner, but between them, Zaffiro stood with his arms rigid at his sides. Apart from a long, intense look exchanged between the twins before Rosso climbed into the van, Zaffiro had seemed indifferent to the departure of the rest of the children. At least the other kids had seemed to accept the explanation that Zaffiro had to stay behind for a medical checkup. Only Julio had looked skeptical, but he knew better than to ask the real reason for the separation.

When the van was out of sight, Lady turned back into the garage. “Well, they’re safely out of the way. Are we ready to get started?”

Nero took in Zaffiro’s stiff posture and anxious expression. “Zaffiro, wait for me in the living room, okay?” He waited until the boy had entered the house ahead of them before speaking to Lady. “Something about this feels wrong.”

“Of course it does. We’re about to expose a kid to a potentially lethal concentration of demonic power.” She shoved her hands in her jacket pockets. “None of us like this plan, but it’s the only one we have.”

“I know. I just mean… I want to talk to him for a few minutes, one-on-one. Make sure he’s really okay with this.”

“Suit yourself,” Lady sighed. “I’ll be in the kitchen, fortifying myself with a double-strength cup of tea. Call me when you’re ready.”

Nero detoured upstairs and retrieved the bottle with the crystal shards before heading to the living room. Zaffiro was gazing out the window, but he turned at Nero’s entrance. His eyes landed on the bottle in Nero’s hand, and the nervousness returned. “Is it time to use those?”

“Not just yet.” Nero set the bottle aside. “First, we need to talk.”

Zaffiro’s tense shoulders lowered, but only fractionally. “About what?”

Nero sat on the sofa and patted the cushion beside him. Zaffiro instead sat at the far end of the couch, watching Nero warily. “I want to know why you agreed to do this.”

The boy frowned. “You said you needed our help. That it was the only way to help you save people.”

“I know. But you didn’t seem too concerned about saving other people when I first laid out the situation. The way it looked to me, you only jumped in when it seemed like your brother was about to volunteer.” Nero rotated to lean against the arm of the couch so he could watch Zaffiro more easily. “So what’s the real reason? You didn’t want to be upstaged by your brother?”

Zaffiro shook his head, but remained silent.

Nero sighed. “Come on, kid, talk to me. I’m not putting you through this until you convince me that you’re really on board with it.”

He hesitated before replying. “You said that our dreams—the other place—those are really our memories.”

“That’s right.”

“So everyone there… all of that really happened, right?”

“Yes.” Nero waited for more, but Zaffiro had fallen silent again. “Is that why you volunteered? Because you wanted all of your memories back?”

“I guess.”

The answer was far from convincing. “Look, we can sit here all day if you want, but it’ll be easier on both of us if you just tell me the truth. Otherwise, we’ll still be sitting here on Sunday when your brother gets back, and he’ll get another shot at going first.” _That_ got a reaction—a minuscule one, to be sure, but Nero caught the flinch. “Tony wanted to help, and he was all set to take the risk. Why did you say you would do it instead?”

Zaffiro looked away. “I was born first.”

“So you wanted to be the first one to get your memory back?”

He shook his head again, but didn’t answer immediately. This time, Nero gave him time to put his words together. “It’s because I’m supposed to protect him,” Zaffiro murmured after a long pause. “Father said so.”

Nero succeeded in controlling his outward reaction to this statement, but his mind reeled. While both boys had mentioned their mother from time to time, they had rarely spoken of their father. “You remember your father?”

Zaffiro nodded, then shook his head. “Only a little. But I remember that before he left, he gave me… something important. He said I was to use its power to protect everyone while he was gone.”

Nero’s mouth had gone dry. He remembered a voice speaking to him that day in Agnus’s lab, when he’d begged for the power to protect those he loved, and something had answered… “That important thing he gave you… was it the Yamato?”

Zaffiro’s head snapped up, his suddenly-cautious gaze fixed on Nero. “It’s _mine_.”

Nero raised his hands. “Hey, relax, I was just asking. No one’s trying to take it from you.” He waited until the wariness left the boy’s eyes before continuing. “Seems like an awful lot of pressure, though, having to protect everyone.”

“Father said that was my responsibility, because I’m the oldest.” Zaffiro looked down at his hands. “If everything in the other place is real, then what Father told me was real, too. But I couldn’t protect Mother. I didn’t even—” He broke off, and his fingers tightened into fists. “My brother is the only one I have left to protect. So I’ll go first. I’ll be the one to find out if it’s safe.”

“Are you sure?” Nero leaned forward. “You didn’t ask for that responsibility, and nobody here—not even your brother—expects you to live a certain way just because of the order you were born in.”

Zaffiro nodded. “I’m sure. It’s what I decided.”

Nero gazed at the child, his body still taut with fear, but his face set in firm resolution. “You’re a pretty amazing kid, you know that?”

Zaffiro returned a look of surprise at the unexpected compliment, but when Nero tried to ruffle his hair, he ducked away and smoothed it back from his face with a scowl.

Nero chuckled at the reaction in spite of what they were about to do. “Okay. Let’s get Lady and…” He glanced around the cramped living room. “You know what, let’s move this shindig upstairs. There’s more space in our bedroom, and we aren’t sure what’s going to happen when we let this genie out of the bottle.” He rattled the shards lightly.

Zaffiro obediently headed for the stairs. Nero paused at the kitchen to collect Lady and retrieve a soup bowl from the cabinet. “What’s that for?” she asked.

He held up the bottle. “You planning on sticking your fingers in to get these things out? Because I’m sure as hell not.” He inverted the bottle and shook it until the crystalline pieces plinked into the bowl. “I hope these don’t leave a toxic residue.”

“Too late now. Let’s just replace the bowl when we’re done.” Lady smiled grimly. “Assuming we all survive this.”

“Trish survived, didn’t she?”

“Trish wasn’t half human, and the fragment she touched was a lot smaller. I was just thinking that we don’t know what will happen when that much energy is released at once. There could be some overflow.”

Nero pitched the empty bottle into the garbage can. “Look, if you don’t want to be in the room, you can stay down here. If you’re right, the worst that happens is that I get hit with the surplus energy, and my devil blood has to sort it out. I survived being pinned to the wall with a sword through my sternum, and getting my arm ripped off. I doubt this could be any worse.”

She shook her head. “No, I signed on for this. There’s no point in my being here if I’m not on hand to help if something goes wrong. Let’s just get it over with so I can stop second-guessing everything we’re doing. I’m starting to psych myself out.”

They ascended the stairs and found Zaffiro sitting on the edge of Nero’s bed, waiting for them. “Okay,” Nero said, injecting more confidence than he felt into his voice. “You ready for this?”

Zaffiro nodded and watched as Nero shook the bowl to separate the fragments. “It feels strange,” he said suddenly.

“What does?”

He pointed to the bowl. “I can feel it when you move them around. It’s like a…” His brow furrowed. “Like a bubble popping, over and over again. But not a real bubble. One inside me.”

Nero exchanged a look with Lady, who shrugged. Although he’d felt the presence of the Nilepoch up close, Nero couldn’t sense anything from the shards themselves. “Well, that might go away after you touch one of them.” He placed the bowl atop the quilt, pushing it into the plush material to make certain it was stable. “We need to take this slow, okay? I only want you to touch the _smallest_ piece. This one, here.” He pointed. “We’re going to move back a bit, and when you’re ready, you touch just that piece. I promise we’ll stay here with you, whatever happens. Understand?”

Zaffiro nodded and watched as Nero and Lady stepped back. He stared into the bowl and took a few deep breaths before extending one finger. Time seemed to slow as his hand moved, and Nero found himself on the verge of calling out—but for what? To stop him? They had decided on this as their best course of action. To say something he hadn’t said before? He wasn’t the type to spout emotional words, and Zaffiro wasn’t the type to seek them out. Perhaps what he wanted was to freeze time here, to let this child _exist_ , just as he was, for a little longer…

But Zaffiro wasn’t really a child, and Nero knew it. He was a powerful half-devil whose help they desperately needed. He was Nero’s estranged father and Dante’s lost brother. He was their hope of defeating the Nilepoch when it returned.

Zaffiro’s finger dipped into the bowl, and a curl of luminous vapor sublimated about his hand as he touched the first shard. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Nero’s lungs began to burn as he held his breath, unsure whether to hope for a reaction or not.

Suddenly Zaffiro cried out, clutching at his head as he pitched forward. Nero started toward him, but his motion was arrested by Lady’s hand on his arm. “Look!”

For a moment a faint violet light pulsed in Zaffiro’s hand, spreading further through his body with each flicker. By the time he landed hard on his knees on the wood floor, the light had faded, but it was clear some transformation was beginning: Zaffiro’s fingers dug into his scalp, and he groaned and twisted where he knelt. His hair seemed first to lengthen, then to grow shorter against his fingers.

“I think it’s working,” Lady breathed. “I think he’s getting older.”

Changes of _some_ kind were obviously taking place, but it was difficult for Nero to tell what those changes were, the way the boy was writhing. It wasn’t until he noticed how tight Zaffiro’s clothes suddenly seemed that he realized what was happening. “Oh, shit. We didn’t think of that.”

Lady looked from Zaffiro to Nero. “Didn’t think of what?”

“As he gets bigger, his clothes are going to be too small.” Right on cue, a seam along the side of Zaffiro’s thigh split with a rasping sound. Nero glanced around the room, but there was no way his own clothing would fit Zaffiro—not yet, in any case. Besides, he was in no condition to change clothes just now; he looked as though he were barely holding himself upright. “Here, hold this.” Nero swept the bowl with the two remaining shards off the bed and thrust it into Lady’s hands, then whipped the quilt off the mattress and dropped it in a semicircle around Zaffiro’s kneeling form. The tight clothing was beginning to cut into the boy’s skin in places, so Nero seized the material and ripped it apart, stripping it off in pieces until Zaffiro was freed from the restricting garments. That done, Nero swept the quilt around his shoulders and tied the corners together. If Vergil _did_ regain his adult form and memories after this, things were bound to be awkward enough without having him wake up fully naked in front of Lady.

After several minutes Zaffiro’s whimpers quieted. He slumped against the side of the bed, his face slack and drenched in sweat. Nero knelt before him, moving slowly to avoid startling him. He didn’t know what the aging process had done to the boy’s mind. “Zaffiro?” he prompted. “Can you hear me?” His eyes were open, at least, and when Nero waved his hand they seemed to track the movement. He was conscious, then. “Zaffiro? You okay?” There was no response.

Nero glanced back at Lady for some guidance. She set the bowl on the dresser and came to crouch beside Nero. “He’s breathing normally,” she observed. One of Zaffiro’s hands lay outside his quilt-toga, and she reached for it. “I’ll check his pul—”

At the touch of her fingers on his wrist, Zaffiro’s body spasmed and recoiled, slamming his shoulders back into the nightstand. Kyrie’s reading lamp wobbled dangerously, and without thinking Nero shot out his spectral arm to stabilize it. At that, Zaffiro let out a hoarse cry and scrabbled away to the corner of the room. His eyes were wide and dilated, and his breath came in wheezing pants. He levered himself up along the wall and stood trembling, eyes darting from Nero and Lady to the door directly behind them.

Lady, following his gaze, rose smoothly and positioned herself in front of the door in case he decided to make a break for it. Nero remained where he was and raised both hands. “Whoa, okay, calm down. Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to spook you.”

Zaffiro scarcely looked at him as he spoke; his eyes were still sweeping the room. They landed on the window, and Nero could see him calculating the distance. Nero tried again, keeping his voice light. “Hey, Zaffiro, it’s me. You hear me? You okay?” There was still no response. Nero got to his feet and took a step closer, hands still raised. Standing, Nero could see that Zaffiro was now a bit taller than Julio, though much leaner. His cheekbones and jawline were too sharp, like the underfed children who sometimes came into the orphanage’s care after years of neglect. “Zaffiro,” Nero called again, and when that got no response, he tried something else. “Vergil?”

The boy’s eyes swung back to Nero.

“Okay, so that’s how it is.” Nero lowered his hands and tucked his thumbs in his pockets—a casual enough pose to put the boy at ease, he hoped, but one that kept his hands free enough to grab him if he bolted for the window. “Vergil, you gotta tell me if you’re okay or not.”

Vergil moistened his lips. “Who are you?” he rasped. “How do you know my name?”

Nero exchanged a glance with Lady, who looked as surprised as he was. “Wow, okay. I wasn’t expecting you to _lose_ memories. Uh… my name’s Nero, and this is Lady. We’ve been taking care of you and your brother.”

“Brother?” Vergil’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “You know where my brother is?”

“Yeah. You two have been living here with me, and Kyrie, and the rest of our foster kids for about three months now. Is any of this ringing a bell?”

“I…” Vergil’s brow furrowed. “I don’t remember coming here, but…” He raised one trembling hand to rub his temple. “My head hurts. What happened to me?”

“I’m not surprised. You got a bunch of memories dumped back in your brain all at once. Maybe. We think.” Nero stepped back to clear a path to the bed. “You want to sit down for a minute? You’re looking pretty pale.”

Vergil shook his head, the cautious expression returning to his face. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

Lady stepped forward. “Vergil, how old are you?”

Vergil eyed her suspiciously. “Thirteen.”

“I see.” Lady glanced at the bowl with the remaining shards, then back at Nero. “The smallest piece gave him about three years back. If the size of the pieces has any correlation with the amount of time regained, there might actually be enough here to get him all the way back to normal.”

“Let’s worry about that later,” Nero murmured. “Hey, Vergil, you’re starting to worry me a little, here. We seriously need to know if you’re okay. Can you tell us how you’re feeling?”

Vergil winced and scrubbed his hands over his face, but when he lowered them to focus on Nero, his pupils seemed less dilated than they had been. “Nero,” he whispered, then blinked a few times. “Nero. I remember now.” He sagged against the wall for a moment, then took a few halting steps to the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. “My head… everything is mixed up. I remember being here, but then I was on my own for a long time…” He looked up at Nero, suddenly hopeful. “Did it work? Are these the memories I lost?”

Nero sank down beside him, his own knees weak with relief. “Some of them. You’ve got a ways to go yet. How do you feel?”

“My head hurts, and I’m tired all over.” That was a major admission, Nero knew, considering how reluctant Zaffiro had been to admit to any weakness. Suddenly, the boy scowled down at the quilt he was wrapped in. “Why am I wearing a blanket?”

Nero laughed. “Your clothes got a little too small. You want to wear something of Julio’s? I bet some of his stuff would fit you now.”

“Will he mind?”

“Nah, I don’t think so. Come on downstairs, and we’ll find something.” Nero steadied him as he stood, swaying a little on his feet.

Lady stopped them at the door. “I’m not making a suggestion one way or another, but if you want to get through this all in one go, you could do another piece now and see where you are after that. I’m betting Julio’s clothes won’t fit after you get a little bigger.”

The boy glanced at the bowl on the dresser, then back up at Nero. “Do I have to do it now?”

“Not if you don’t want to. We’ve got all day tomorrow, too.”

“Then I think I’d like to rest first,” he said. “I’m really tired.”

Lady nodded. “Fair enough. You go get dressed. You want a snack? I’ll fix you something if you like.”

He shook his head. “Just something to drink, please.”

“Sure thing.” She smiled and watched him start downstairs, then met Nero’s eyes and allowed her relief to show. “I think that experience aged _me_ ten years. But he seems okay.”

“Yeah. That went about as well as we could have asked, all things considered.”

“It really did.” She glanced at the remaining shards. “One down, two to go. Maybe. If this works the way we think it ought to.”

Nero blew out a long breath. “Let’s just hope the rest of the process is that easy.”


	44. Chapter 44

Nero crawled backwards out of the dark, narrow space, dragging what he hoped was the right box. Thick dust tickled his nose, and he resisted the urge to sneeze until he was back in the hallway where he could do so without stirring up more clouds of it.

Lady gave him a curious look as he entered the living room. “What on earth did you get into?”

“The storage closet under the stairs.” Nero sneezed again. “We don’t get in there very often.”

“Evidently not. You have cobwebs in your hair.”

Nero swiped halfheartedly at the debris clinging to his head and rubbed his fingers on his jeans before setting the dusty cardboard box on the coffee table. It was sealed shut with layers of packing tape, but Kyrie’s neat printing catalogued the items inside.

Their young charge was curled into a corner of the sofa, holding the glass of milk Lady had insisted he drink for protein when he’d refused supper. The boy had said little in the hours since he’d regained three years’ worth of memories, and periodically his gaze turned distant and haunted, as it was now. They had tried to engage him in conversation, but not only was he reluctant to speak about what he’d experienced, his memories seemed to be slipping in and out of place: At times he only answered to Vergil, while minutes later he seemed confused as to why Nero wasn’t calling him Zaffiro.

As Nero stripped back a layer of the tape, Zaffiro’s vacant eyes focused, and he turned to watch what was happening. Lady leaned forward in the armchair. “So what’s in the box?”

“Stuff we packed up after Credo died.” Nero unfolded the box flaps and tried to suppress the ache in his chest as he looked inside. Stacked between neat layers of tissue paper lay Credo’s journals, his Order medals, the reading glasses he refused to admit he needed and only wore when he thought Kyrie wasn’t looking… Nero swallowed against the sudden tightness in his throat and began searching through the box. “I told you Credo only listened to stuff like Classical music, didn’t I?”

Lady nodded. “You mentioned something about it.”

“Well, he was kinda hard to buy for, and we were always getting in fights over the stereo, so one year for his birthday, I got him a set of… _There_ they are!” Nero fished a stack of CD cases out of a corner of the box. “I should have thought of this weeks ago. Take a look, kiddo. Is there anything in here you’d like to listen to?” He deposited the discs beside Zaffiro on the couch.

While Zaffiro browsed through the recordings, Nero retrieved his own headphones—Credo’s gift to him—and portable CD player from upstairs. By the time he returned to the living room, the boy had selected an album labeled _Saint-Sa_ _ëns Violin Concertos_. Nero had no idea who or what a Saint-Saëns was, but he wasn’t surprised that the kid had gone for something with violins.

Zaffiro eyed the headphones hopefully. “May I listen in my room?”

That suited Nero’s purpose even better. “Sure. Finish your milk and brush your teeth first, though. That way you can just go to sleep whenever you get tired.”

Lady watched the boy disappear down the hall. “I hope that music helps him sleep better. He’s seemed pretty freaked out all evening.”

“Yeah, maybe it will.”

“But I’m guessing that’s not what you had in mind when you dug out those recordings.” Lady cocked her head to one side. “So what was that about?”

Nero scooped the remaining CDs back into the box and dropped onto the couch. “I just thought if he had headphones on, the grown-ups could have a conversation without worrying about triggering some bad memory or other. I feel like I have to tiptoe around him when he’s in this state, and I’m not real good at subtle.”

“I hadn’t noticed that at all,” Lady said dryly. “Are you worried he’ll go into another shutdown like before?”

“Not to that extreme, no. I think he’s probably past that now. He said he’s thirteen, right? So he must have been coping on his own for a long time, and I don’t think he would have survived this long if he were still that sensitive to bad experiences.” Nero leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “But I’m a little worried about how tomorrow will go. That kid down the hall, he has some of Vergil’s memories, but he still basically acts like Zaffiro, just a bit older and quieter. We know how to handle him. But if the other shards work like this one did, and give him just part of his memories back at a time, we could be stuck with Vergil from a different period in his life. And that could get messy. I mean, he spent years brainwashed and working for Mundus, right? What if we get _that_ version back, instead of the Vergil we know?”

Lady considered this. “I think it might mess up your bedroom.”

Nero blinked. “Come again?”

“I just mean in the worst case, we might have to… contain him, one way or another.”

“You think we can?” Nero frowned. “Look—if you ever repeat this, I’ll deny everything, but it’s very possible a younger, well-rested Vergil can kick my ass. I’ve only really fought him once, and that was after he was already worn down from fighting Dante, and when we stopped fighting he wasn’t exactly down for the count, you know? I got the upper hand for a few seconds, and then he and Dante left to deal with the Qliphoth. If he’d kept fighting, I honestly don’t know how it would have come out. And if he’s even younger and in better shape…”

Lady held up a finger. “Hold on, there. You’re thinking in human terms. Devils gain power as they age, remember? Vergil is _far_ stronger at forty-five than he was at twenty-five. So is Dante. Trust me, I know from personal experience. Today, Dante could probably snap my neck with a finger-flick, but I fought him seriously when we first met, and he wasn’t nearly that strong. I even held my own against Vergil, then. And I’m pretty sure you’re a tougher opponent now than I was at nineteen.”

Nero was staring at her. “Wait, you _fought_ Dante and Vergil? I knew you met them then, but…”

She laughed. “What, you thought we just exchanged pleasantries and became pen pals? Dante and I didn’t exactly start on the same side. And Vergil was working for the man I’d set out to kill. We all tried to kill each other at some point.”

“Wow.” He shook his head. “I knew you were tough, but now you’re just plain _scary_. You sure you’re totally human?”

“So far as I know. Turns out I have some priestess heritage on my mother’s side, but so far all that’s gotten me is a bayonet through the hamstring.” She traced the scar on her leg. “Though I suppose that’s partly Sparda’s fault for sacrificing my ancestor in a ritual.”

“Sparda.” Nero recalled the conversation he’d had with Zaffiro earlier in the day. “I hate to say this, but we may have to make Vergil an honorary member of the asshole-daddy club.”

“Oh?” Lady’s eyes widened. “I thought Sparda was the great hero who saved mankind?”

“Maybe he was, but he sounds like a crap dad. Apparently when Vergil was little, Sparda handed him the Yamato, told him it was his responsibility to protect his family because he was the firstborn son, and then disappeared. It was before their mother died, so Vergil can’t have been more than six or seven years old. Can you imagine telling a kid Kyle’s age that he’s responsible for defending his entire family?”

Lady gave a low whistle. “That would certainly account for some of his hangups.”

Nero nodded. “I’m pretty sure he blames himself for not protecting his mother. Even though he wasn’t even there at the time, according to Trish. And even if he was—he was only _eight_. What could he have done against a horde of demons?”

“Nothing.” Lady sighed. “I went through some of that after my mother died, because I was away at camp when it happened. It took me a long time to accept that I probably couldn’t have stopped it even if I’d been there. And I was older, and knew how to look up terms like ‘survivor’s guilt’ and figure out what was going on with myself. A child that young wouldn’t even realize that what he felt wasn’t rational.”

Nero slumped lower and tipped his head back to rest against the sofa cushions. “Sometimes I just want to punch the whole world in the face. Too many kids have to go through too much shit they don’t deserve, and it just keeps being passed down, parent to child. If we could somehow guarantee just one complete generation of happy kids, I bet we’d solve all the world’s problems within a century.”

Lady watched him for a moment, then laughed softly. “I get it now.”

Nero rocked his head sideways to look at her. “Get what?”

“What Kyrie sees in you.” She nudged him with her foot. “You’ve got the tough-guy act down, but inside, you’re about as edgy as a marshmallow.”

Nero rolled his eyes. “Whatever,” he huffed.

Lady just laughed.

* * *

The next morning saw them once again gathered in Nero’s bedroom. Zaffiro, wrapped in Nero’s threadbare bathrobe, hovered uncertainly beside the bed. The bowl with the two remaining fragments of Nilepoch crystal sat atop the mattress.

“Are you sure you don’t want something to eat first?” Nero asked.

The boy shook his head. He’d sipped a glass of juice at Nero’s insistence, but hadn’t touched the omelette Lady had cooked. “Maybe that’s for the best,” Lady murmured. “Depending on how this goes, it might be better if he doesn’t have a full stomach.”

Nero suspected there was more to his reticence. He had seen the boy’s hungry gaze fixed on the food, but since waking Zaffiro had remained quiet and withdrawn, and seemed almost suspicious of the adults in the house. He had stayed well out of their reach for most of the morning, and had even locked himself in the bathroom to change into the robe. Apparently the memory of being Vergil—and whatever hardships or betrayals that had encompassed—was beginning to supersede the memory of the time he’d spent as Zaffiro.

But Nero couldn’t spare the time to regret the disappearance of the child he’d known; the morning was wearing on, and they had no idea how long the next transformation would take. If Lady’s estimate about the size of the crystals were correct, Vergil still had more than thirty years’ worth of memories to regain. “Whenever you’re ready,” Nero told Zaffiro at last. “Touch the smaller piece first, like before. We’ll stand over here in case you need us.”

The process began much the same as it had the previous day, with the crystal sublimating and some strange power spreading visibly beneath the boy’s skin. Once again he huddled on the floor as his body transformed, groaning in obvious pain and variously clutching at his head or torso. Gradually his hair changed length, his limbs grew longer, his body thickened, and his exposed chest and calves swelled with muscle. At one point, Nero thought he saw a shadow of stubble appear and vanish from his cheek. His body was clearly maturing, edging inexorably toward adulthood.

Other marks began to appear on his body, as well. They flickered and faded so quickly that Nero didn’t recognize them for what they were at first. “I guess he had to learn all those sword skills somewhere,” he observed after a few minutes.

“What?” Lady, who had been lost in her own thoughts, looked at Vergil. “What brought that up?”

“Those bruises, or cuts, or whatever they are. See there, on his chest?” He pointed as a slender gash appeared and healed almost immediately. “Looks like he took some hits. Maybe during training.”

“You think that’s his body _remembering_ being injured?”

“Well, he’s aging at the same time, so maybe it’s just running his body through everything that happened to it. The Nilepoch was called the Life-Stealer, right? Maybe he’s getting his whole life experience back, wounds and all.”

Lady crossed her arms. “That’s a disturbing thought.”

“It’s no weirder than anything else that’s happening right now.”

“No, I just meant…” Her eyes flicked to the remaining shard. “What Trish told us.”

“Oh.” Nero swallowed. “Yeah, I see what you mean. He’s got a lot to live through.”

“Maybe it won’t be that bad.” Lady’s arms cinched tighter across her chest. “It’s just history, right? It can’t really hurt him.”

“Like the memory that put him in a catatonic state for days?” The hair on the back of Nero’s neck prickled, and he and Lady both jumped as a surge of demonic energy encased Vergil’s body in blue lightning. For an instant, he looked different—a devil form Nero hadn’t seen before, slimmer than the one he’d faced atop the Qliphoth and lacking the dragon-like wings and tail—and then the image was gone, back to a writhing human figure caught somewhere between youth and adulthood.

The full change took a bit longer than before, but this time Vergil’s recovery was much faster. After a disoriented moment or two on the floor, he rose gracefully to his feet and swept the room with a cold gaze. His eyes flicked from Nero to Lady. Perspiration beaded on his skin, a remnant of the grueling aging process, but he stood erect, weight balanced on the balls of his bare feet as though prepared for a fight.

“Welcome back,” Nero began.

“Back?” The word was clipped and blade-sharp.

“Hoo, boy,” Lady muttered _sotto voce_. “This ought to be fun.”

“Fun?” Nero took his eyes off Vergil to glance at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ve met this one before. Or at least pretty close.” She addressed Vergil. “You’re what, eighteen? Nineteen years old?”

“That is no concern of yours.” Vergil’s eyes narrowed. “How have you brought me here, and what have you done to me? _Speak._ ”

Nero’s eyebrows shot up. “Wow. Really?”

“Yeah, I forgot to mention he was a total prick at this age.” Lady’s eyes roved over Vergil’s figure. “Hot as hell, though. _Damn_. Not sure how I missed that the first time around.”

Nero rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t deny her assessment: Vergil’s muscular, well-proportioned frame managed to make even Nero’s tattered bathrobe look regal, and his chiseled face could have sold anything from perfume to luxury watches. Only the arrogant sneer contorting his mouth marred the effect.

Vergil merely flicked his eyes to Lady before shifting his gaze back to Nero. “You will answer my questions.” His lips tightened in concentration, and a luminous blue sword shimmered into existence over his shoulder.

“Oh, _hell_ no.” Nero’s spectral hand shot out and crushed the summoned blade into shards of light. “You jack up my bedroom with that shit, and I will kick your ass all the way back to Red Grave.”

Vergil’s eyes kindled with sudden interest. “So _that_ is your power. I can sense that you aren’t entirely human. Who are you?”

Nero swallowed. It should be a simple answer, but how would _this_ Vergil react to the truth? Even the one he knew had seemed dismissive of him at first, and he had to assume that he wasn’t even a twinkle in this younger Vergil’s eye yet. Still, the man who would one day be his father was staring at him expectantly, and maybe the truth would help rein in his belligerent attitude. “I’m your son.”

Vergil’s face went blank. For a few seconds Nero wondered if the revelation had somehow short-circuited his brain, but he could see the minute shifting of Vergil’s eyes as they took in Nero’s features and white hair. A mask, then. “Explain.”

Lady barked a laugh. “I know you’re young right now, but you can’t be _that_ young.”

The flash of Vergil’s eyes toward her was as blue and nearly as deadly as one of his summoned swords. “I am well aware of the biological process—just as I know that I could not possibly have sired offspring a decade before I was born.” He flicked an eyebrow at Nero. “Give or take a few years.”

Nero could see Lady preparing for another volley, so he cut her off. “Short version: A demon de-aged you, and we’re trying to get you back to normal. These crystal pieces contain the time and memories that were stolen from you. You’ve absorbed two of them so far. We’re hoping that this last one contains enough power to return you to your proper age.”

Vergil’s eyes fixed on the remaining shard with chilling intensity. “Uh-oh,” Lady said dryly. “You used the P-word. Now there’ll be no stopping him.”

“Wait.” Nero extended a hand, and Vergil tensed as though to counter an attack. Nero raised his palms in a gesture of peace. “There’s something you should know first.”

Vergil didn’t relax his stance. “Speak.”

It was difficult not to answer his hostility in kind, but Nero forced his voice to stay level. “Right now you’re still missing something like twenty-five years. When you touch that thing, you’re going to recover the memories from that part of your life, as well.”

“Your point being?”

Nero glanced at Lady, but she tensed and looked away. “Look—the next few years _really_ suck for you,” he said. “Like, the worst-days-of-your-life kinda suck. You’ll live through it, but getting those memories back may… hurt.”

“It matters not,” Vergil replied without hesitation. “If this power is mine, I will reclaim it.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured you’d say that.” Nero sighed. “Just… take it easy, okay? Don’t freak out on me, or hurt yourself, or anything.”

“Hurt myself?” Vergil scoffed. “You must truly have a low opinion of me.”

“Just the opposite, actually, but it’s starting to slide the longer I talk to you.” Nero gestured to the bowl. “Knock yourself out, hotshot. We’ll be here when you wake up.”

* * *

As promised, Nero stayed through the whole of Vergil’s transformation, though Lady excused herself once the screaming started. Nero knelt nearby, hating that he was powerless to relieve Vergil’s pain as he thrashed against whatever invisible enemies persecuted him. He knew from Trish’s confession that Mundus had used Vergil’s own memories to torment and manipulate him, but it was clear that his captor had reveled in physical torture as well: Illusory wounds opened and closed on Vergil’s chest, blood pooling in the cavities before vanishing beneath ropy scars. The skin of his hands and feet was flayed away. Deep fissures gouged his face from hairline to throat. Vergil’s unseeing eyes flickered from blue to red, and veins of some demonic power pulsed violet through his pallid skin. His flesh cracked, crumbled and re-formed, reminding Nero of the way V’s body had broken down near the end of his life. Had that, too, been a shadow of something Vergil had previously experienced?

After more than an hour of agony—when his voice had gone raw from screaming, and droplets of sweat and tears dotted the wood planks around his body like rain—Vergil sagged against the floor, mercifully unconscious.

Nero gingerly brushed sweat-drenched hair back from his father’s slack face, finally restored to its normal hue rather than the sickly gray his flesh had turned in the throes of his metamorphosis. The scars covering his body had vanished somewhere along the way, while the skin had gradually roughened and acquired its familiar creases. This was the Vergil Nero recognized, the one he’d fought atop the Qliphoth, the one who had led Dante to the underworld and then followed him back home. This was his father as he knew him.

Only he’d never really known him, had he? He’d certainly never known about any of _this_.

Lady reappeared when there had been silence in the room for several minutes. “How is he?” she asked softly.

“He’s out of it, for now.” Nero shook his head. “I bet when he wakes up, he’ll try to pretend none of this ever happened.”

“Can you blame him?” Lady wrapped her arms around herself. “The way he sounded… I wouldn’t want to talk about it, either. Or even _think_ about it. I can’t imagine what he’s just gone through.”

“Yeah.” Watching the change had given Nero the barest idea of the agony Vergil had experienced, but he knew the visible physical effects were by no means the worst of what he had suffered. “I’m not sure what we’d say to him, even if it did come up.”

Lady brushed Nero’s shoulder. “How are _you_ holding up?”

Nero shrugged. “I’m not the one who just had to relive years of torture and slavery at high speed.”

“No. Just the one who witnessed it.”

Nero’s legs were growing stiff from crouching, so he rocked back to a sitting position. “Trish told us what he went through, but just knowing about it isn’t the same as seeing what it did to him. For someone who’s normally so…” He gestured with his hand.

“Stoic?”

“I was thinking ‘emotionally constipated,’ but yeah. Something that could make even _him_ lose control like that is just…” He shivered. “I mean, what does it take for that to happen? What could even _do_ that to him?”

Lady nodded. “Vergil may be lacking in the humanity department, but he’s always been strong. Trish said it took a lot to break him, but the very fact that a demon exists that _could_ is pretty terrifying.” She knelt beside Vergil and pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. “He’s feverish.”

“His body’s been through a lot. Aging that fast, plus all the trauma. Think we can get him on the bed?”

They lifted him together, Nero taking most of Vergil’s weight, and soon had him positioned on the mattress. Nero was tucking a pillow beneath his neck when Lady giggled. “What?” he asked.

She combed Vergil’s loose hair forward with her fingers. “Look, it’s Dante.”

Nero knew he shouldn’t laugh—knew his father would probably _murder_ him for laughing—but with Vergil unconscious and his face fully relaxed, he really did look like his twin, more than he ever had when he was awake. “Now all he needs is a magazine over his face.”

“I could get one from downstairs. We could take a photo. That’s blackmail material, right there.”

“No, thanks, I don’t actually have a death wish.” Nero shook out the quilt and draped it over Vergil’s body. “I wonder how long he’ll stay out.”

Lady shrugged. “They’ve always been fast healers.”

“Yeah, but Dante spent a whole month unconscious after that first fight with Urizen. I mean, that would have killed most people, so I guess it’s still relatively fast healing, but it doesn’t give us a reliable estimate.” Nero sat on the edge of the bed. “Look, I’ll stay with him, if you’ve got something else to do. No reason for both of us to sit around up here.”

Lady glanced toward the door with clear longing. “Actually, I wouldn’t mind putting my feet up for a few minutes. With everything that’s been going on, I’m still a little short on sleep.”

“Go for it.” Nero waved her toward the stairs. “There’s nothing else we can do for now, except wait.”

“Okay. Shout if you need anything.”

When Lady had gone, Nero stared down at Vergil’s still form. “That just isn’t right.” He swept Vergil’s hair back into its usual style. “You should be grateful Nico isn’t here. She’d never let this go.” He imagined Dante raking his own hair back in a mockery of his brother’s style, or Trish smirking at the resemblance, or Lady snapping a photo for posterity. “None of them would. Good thing I’ve got your back, huh?”

After several minutes, Nero yawned. Perhaps Lady had the right idea; they should take advantage of any chance to rest. If Vergil stirred, Nero would be here to help him, but it wasn’t as though staring at him would improve his condition.

Stretching out on the other half of the bed, Nero closed his eyes and focused on the sound of his father’s shallow breathing to assure himself that everything would, somehow, be all right.


	45. Chapter 45

Nero hadn’t intended to sleep as long or as soundly as he did. When he blinked back to groggy awareness, the sun had already painted slanting stripes across the room, indicating that it was well past noon. He swore under his breath and rubbed his gritty eyes with one hand.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Nero jolted fully awake and twisted toward the other side of the bed to see Vergil sitting with his shoulders pressed against the headboard. His eyes were closed, but at least he was vertical. “Hey, you’re awake!” Nero rolled upright. “How do you feel?”

“I’ve had better days.” Vergil’s voice was rough, no doubt strained by the hour of screaming. His eyes opened fractionally, but he didn’t look at Nero. “I suppose I’ve also had worse ones.”

_Right_. Conversations with Vergil were always an exercise in frustration. “Don’t be too specific, or anything.”

Vergil’s eyes closed again. “Had I words sufficient to describe my condition, I would do so.”

Nero thought that sounded relatively tetchy, coming from Vergil, so he must be closer to the “worse days” end of that scale. Which, considering what he’d been through that morning, was understandable. “Okay, we’ll just stick to the basics. What sounds good? Food? Drink? Aspirin?”

“Water,” Vergil answered. He opened his eyes again and frowned down at his body, still wrapped in Nero’s threadbare bathrobe. “Both inside and out. I should like to avail myself of your shower, if I may.”

“Avail away. I’ll bring you some clothes.” Nero hesitated. “You good to walk downstairs, or you want some help?”

Vergil didn’t validate the offer with a response, but his expression made it clear that even if he were missing both legs, he would find a way to manage the stairs on his own.

* * *

The shower was running by the time Nero went downstairs. He opened the bathroom door just far enough to deposit the promised clothing on the counter before moving to Lady’s bedroom and knocking.

“It’s open,” she called. Nero entered, and Lady yawned as she swung her feet to the floor. “Sorry, I guess I was really out for a while. How’s the patient? Do you need help?”

“The patient is in the shower, and is evidently back to his usual self. By which I mean I have this constant low-key desire to punch him in the face.”

“Already? Wow, he really must have made a full recovery.” Lady smoothed her sleep-mussed hair with her fingers. “I can’t wait to have a chat with the old Vergil again. I do that whenever I’m not feeling up to a job. He’s so motivating.”

Nero looked at her askance. “Motivating?”

“Five minutes in a room with him, and suddenly I can’t _wait_ to go kill something.” Her mocking smile faded. “Though now, knowing what he went through… I suppose it might take a little longer to get angry with him. I doubt he ever got much mileage out of acting like a decent human being, so it’s not surprising he’s out of practice.”

“Yeah, I get that.” Nero leaned against the doorjamb. “I mean, what he did was _seriously_ jacked up, but then, so was his life, you know? Not that that justifies his actions, but…”

“But it helps explain them.” Lady nodded slowly. “He was a good kid, before Mundus and all hell crashed into his life. He didn’t start out the way he is.”

“Kinda makes you wonder what they would have been like if none of it had happened. Him and Dante, both.” Nero smiled faintly. “Dante once joked that Vergil would have been on stage if he weren’t obsessed with fighting. Only… maybe it wasn’t a joke. Maybe that’s what he wanted to do, when he was a kid.”

“You mean playing violin?” Lady considered it. “You know, I think I could see him doing that. Zaffiro, I mean. Not Vergil.”

“Yeah, it’s hard to picture Vergil doing anything other than… what he does. Whatever that actually is.” The sound of the shower cut off, and Nero leaned out to glance down the hall. “Speak of the devil. Half-devil.” He turned back to Lady. “You want some lunch? I doubt Vergil will admit to being hungry, but he hasn’t eaten in more than twenty-four hours.”

“I could eat.” Lady yawned again and stood. “I could also murder a cup of coffee. You want one?”

“Given how hard we both crashed, I think a whole pot is in order.”

They relocated to the kitchen and began scraping together lunch. A few minutes later, Vergil appeared in the doorway, damp hair slicked back a little flatter than usual. “Welcome back.” Lady held up a mug of coffee. “Want one?”

Vergil shook his head, and belatedly Nero recalled his earlier request. He filled a glass from the cold tap and set it on the counter. “There’s ice in the freezer if you want.”

“This is fine. Thank you.” Vergil picked up the glass and drained it.

“And there’s more water in the faucet,” Nero added. “Lunch is almost ready. You like olives, right?”

Vergil nearly concealed his surprise, but a single blink slipped through. “Yes.”

“Thought so. Lady?”

“It depends. What kind of olives?”

“Castelvetrano.”

She squinted. “Those aren’t the weird purple ones, are they?”

Nero laughed. “You’re probably thinking of Kalamata, and those are Greek.” He held up a bright green olive. “We eat proper Italian olives here. You want to try one before I lace your food with them?”

“No, I’ll live dangerously.”

“Suit yourself.” Nero added a handful of chopped olives to the bowl of raw egg and grated cheese before pouring the mixture over the pasta he’d just drained. He whisked everything together and portioned it out onto three plates. “ _Linguini carbonara senza pancetta con le olive_ ,” he announced as he slid the plates onto the table. “Also known as, ‘Nero’s cooking and we’re out of bacon.’”

“Well, it smells good, with or without bacon.” Lady picked out an olive and sampled it. “Okay, Dante’s officially on the wrong side of the great olive debate. What kind did you say these were?”

“Castelvetrano. You can buy them almost anywhere.”

“Good. I’m going to sneak some onto his next pizza and see if he notices.”

Vergil emitted a huff of laughter. “Living dangerously, indeed.”

Nero and Lady both turned toward him in surprise. Vergil pretended not to notice their reactions, and Nero quickly shifted his attention back to his plate. He didn’t want to make Vergil feel any more awkward than he probably already did. “So now that you’re up and moving, is everything back to normal? You got all your memories back?”

“As far as I’m aware. Though I’m not sure I’d know if I hadn’t.”

“What about the, uh, last three months? Living here?” Nero poked at an olive with his fork. “You still remember any of that?”

“I do.” Vergil paused to sip more water, then stared pensively into his glass. “Though the last few days are… less distinct.”

Nero caught Lady’s eye across the table in a visual _I-told-you-so_. Pretending he couldn’t recall the trauma he’d suffered in returning to his adult self conveniently allowed Vergil to dodge any uncomfortable questions about it. “Yeah, getting your memories back probably just shook things up a little. Don’t worry, you didn’t miss anything important.”

Nero wasn’t sure, but he thought he could detect a trace of relief on Vergil’s face. “Presumably the same method can be used to restore Dante’s age.”

“Provided we can get more of those shards. And that might take some doing, considering how long it took to get the ones we used on you.”

“It should be easier next time, with one more fighter in our party.” Lady’s eyes shifted to Vergil. “That is, assuming you’re willing to lend a hand?”

“Of course,” he replied. Lady seemed to have expected some resistance on that front, and regarded Vergil with a gleam of suspicion in her eyes. He ignored the look and neatly twined a strand of pasta around his fork. “I have a score to settle, after all.”

“Ah.” Lady’s smile was frigid. “Naturally, that takes precedence over helping your brother.”

“The two objectives are not mutually exclusive.”

Nero didn’t like the sudden tension permeating the atmosphere between them, but he wasn’t entirely sure how to alleviate it. “Don’t forget we still have to track the damn thing down. Until we do, Dante’s gonna be stuck as Tony.”

Lady returned her attention to her own plate. “Well, there are worse things he could be. At least he’s relatively safe here—safer than he would be as an adult, anyway. And Dante _is_ kind of cute as a ten-year-old.”

Vergil flicked an eyebrow. “If we gauge by maturity level, I’m not sure there’s any discernible difference.”

“Ouch.” Nero grimaced. “I kinda feel like somebody ought to defend him, but I’m not sure you’re wrong.”

“Well, maturity aside, he’s certainly of more use at an age where he can wield a sword, so we should endeavor to take back what the Nilepoch drained from him as quickly as possible.”

Vergil’s inflection on the demon’s name was slightly different than the way Nero and the others had been pronouncing it, which snagged Nero’s attention; it meant he hadn’t picked up the word by overhearing it from them. Casting his memory back over the last few minutes of conversation, Nero didn’t think they’d even spoken it aloud.

Lady had caught the distinct pronunciation, too. She stared at Vergil in plain surprise. “You know the demon that did this?”

He nodded. “I’ve seen them before.”

“In the underworld?”

Vergil fixed her with a look. “As opposed to the local supermarket?”

“One never knows, where you’re concerned.” Lady’s eyes narrowed. “I’m starting to lose track of exactly how many cities you’ve turned into hellgates.”

Nero threw up a hand. “Time out! You both know the house rules about bickering at the table, so at least wait until after we’re done eating to go for each other’s throats.” There were no specific rules about bickering, but he doubted either of them would challenge him on it. “So, what, are there herds of wild Nilepochs running around loose in the underworld?” He automatically mimicked Vergil’s inflection; after all, he’d only seen the word in print, and he had to assume Vergil-the-multilingual was a more reliable source than his own best guess at how it was pronounced.

“Only a few, and not loose.” He hesitated, though the pause was so brief Nero wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it before Vergil was speaking again. “The former emperor of the underworld—Mundus—kept them to intimidate, and sometimes punish, his subordinates.”

“Mundus, huh?” Nero glanced at Lady and saw her mirroring his frown. “I’m surprised Trish didn’t know what kind of demon it was, then.”

The tines of Vergil’s fork struck the plate a little more forcefully as he jabbed another olive. “No doubt she was never subjected to a display of its abilities. After all, a ruler need not waste effort intimidating his most loyal sycophants.”

Nero thought that assumption might have backfired on Mundus, considering Trish’s betrayal of her creator, but he kept those thoughts to himself. “So do you know anything else about them? We found them mentioned in a couple of books, but there wasn’t a lot of detail. What more can you tell us?”

Vergil’s brow creased. “Not much that would be of any strategic use. I saw them rarely, and never had opportunity to fight one. Its attack was not usually lethal on its own, but even powerful devils could be weakened by it almost to the point of death.”

Nero nodded. “We saw what it did to a lesser demon. And it _is_ lethal to humans. The bastard’s already killed about a dozen people that we know of.”

“That’s hardly surprising. Whatever mechanism it uses to drain demons of their vitality would doubtless have a different effect on human physiology.”

Nero suppressed a sigh. He wasn’t surprised that Vergil could speak of the loss of human life with such clinical detachment, considering how many innocent deaths the man had to his account, but it was still disheartening. “The tricky thing is predicting when it will show up again. As long as it was coming back to feed on that Riot we had caged up, we knew when to expect it. But now we have no idea what it’s eating since we fought it. Plus, it’s been injured, and there’s no telling how that will affect the cycle.”

“Within reasonable distance, I should be able to sense its presence,” Vergil said. “And Trish is still here, is she not?”

“Yeah, she’s with Kyrie and the kids. They’ll be back tomorrow.”

Vergil nodded. “Then whenever it appears, we should be able to triangulate its location.”

Lady raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you usually need _three_ points to triangulate?”

Vergil’s eyes slid to Nero, who fervently hoped that the warmth he could feel creeping up his neck didn’t reach his face. “Oh,” Vergil said after a few seconds.

Nero shoved the last bite of pasta into his mouth and willed away the embarrassment he felt at not being quite devil enough to fit into his father’s plans. It was an absurd feeling, anyway; he knew he was one of the best hunters in the business even _without_ the ability to sense demons. He did pretty damn well for being three-quarters human. He stood and gathered his dishes. “Everybody finished?”

“I’ll get the dishes,” Lady offered, taking her own plate to the sink.

“You don’t have to—”

“You cooked, I’ll clean. Standard trade-off. Now hand it over before you have to explain to Kyrie that the reason you have a boot-shaped bruise on your backside is from me kicking you out of the kitchen.”

Nero rolled his eyes, but surrendered his plate. “Yes, ma’am.”

Lady extended her hand to Vergil. “You too, sunshine.” Vergil drained the last of the water in his glass and let her take his dishes. “Now if you two want something to do, you might start working on how you’re going to explain Zaffiro’s disappearance to the rest of the kids when they get back. Because I have no idea what to tell them.”

“That makes two of us,” Nero sighed. He wandered out to the living room as he pondered the question. Vergil followed him, which was to be expected; the house was small enough that there really wasn’t anywhere else he could go. The children’s bedroom hardly suited him now. “Hey, if you want to rest, you can use our bedroom.” Or was that assuming too much? “Or the boys’ room. Wherever you want.”

Vergil glanced around the room, taking it in from a higher altitude. “I’ve rested sufficiently.”

“Yeah, I guess we all sort of crashed for a while this morning.” Nero sat in the armchair to stop himself from fidgeting. For all the energy and effort and anxiety he’d expended to get his father back to normal, he was at a complete loss as to what to say to the man now that they were in the same room. In many ways, Zaffiro had been easier to relate to.

Zaffiro, he realized abruptly, had also been far less unsettling to see occupying Nero’s living space. Zaffiro-the-child had never injured Nero and left him for dead, never manipulated and deceived him, never fought him or mocked him or belittled his existence. Vergil-the-man had done all that, and more.

And now Vergil-the-man was sitting at the far end of the couch, in the precise spot where Zaffiro had so often curled up with a book—only now the space seemed too cramped for his full-sized body. His adult proportions dwarfed the decorative pillows Zaffiro had once napped on, and his long legs extended beneath the coffee table. His presence seemed to loom, a cold shadow spreading over the cozy living room. Perhaps the experience was strange for him, as well; he seemed distracted, brushing at his slacks and running a hand down the front of his dark turtleneck.

The silence was grating. Nero was just about to make an attempt at conversation when Vergil said, “Nero.”

Nero’s pulse quickened. It was irrational, and he hated it. “Yeah?”

“These clothes…”

_Oh_. Nero swallowed. “Yeah, they’re yours. I brought them from the shop when I came back.”

“I see. That was optimistic of you.”

It took Nero a moment to work out his meaning. “Uh, no, not really. I didn’t realize what had happened to you and Dante until I got back to Fortuna.”

Vergil frowned. “But you were at the factory with us.”

“Yeah, and I spent the next few days unconscious. Nico’s the one who found you two and brought you here.”

“Unconscious? Strange; I didn’t sense any significant demonic presence besides the Nilepoch. What attacked you?”

Nero resisted the urge to laugh, though there was nothing humorous about it. “You don’t remember launching me across the room?”

“I… moved you out of its line of attack, yes.” His expression smoothed, and Nero wondered what emotion the mask was hiding this time. “Approaching from multiple angles was our best strategy against it.”

“Yeah.” Nero did laugh then, leaning forward with elbows on his knees. “For future reference, when you fling somebody who’s seventy-five percent human head-first into a concrete wall, it kinda breaks their skull a little bit.”

Even Vergil’s practiced mask could not conceal the widening of his eyes. “Oh. That… was not my intent.”

“I certainly hope not. Because as a battle plan, putting your own team members into a coma kinda sucks.”

The muscles around Vergil’s mouth tightened. “I’m… sorry.” The words seemed to cost him something more than they should have. Perhaps apologizing in any form was a blow to his pride. “For injuring you.”

Nero shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “I survived.” It was cruel, perhaps, to deny him the response he was asking for, but Nero wasn’t about to grant his father anything that could be construed as forgiveness for _another_ time that Vergil had nearly killed him. The factory incident might honestly have been an error in judgment; tearing off his arm was another matter entirely.

Vergil showed no reaction to his words, but that, too, was to be expected. He glanced down at his clothing again as though Nero’s near-death experience had been a mere aside in the conversation. “So if you didn’t know we were here…”

“I borrowed them.” Nero threw the words down like a gauntlet. “I was staying at the shop while I recuperated and needed something to wear.”

“I see.”

“Hope you don’t mind.”

“No.”

“I mean, it’s not like you were around to ask—”

“I don’t mind.” Vergil’s words were mild and, as far as Nero could detect, sincere.

“Good. Okay.” Nero had anticipated… _something_ , even if he wasn’t sure what, and now his unrealized agitation set the demonic energy at his core fizzing. _Damn_ , he wanted to fight something right now. Was this what Lady had meant about Vergil being good for her motivation?

“But you didn’t borrow anything from Dante, did you?” Vergil asked suddenly.

“Uh, that would require Dante to have done laundry sometime in the last decade, so no.”

“I suspected as much.” A corner of Vergil’s mouth curved up. For an instant Nero wondered if this somehow earned Vergil a point in the brothers’ ongoing rivalry, but when he spoke again, it proved to be pure _schadenfreude._ “I wonder what we can find for Dante to wear.”


	46. Chapter 46

Lady joined them in the living room when she’d finished the dishes, and what Nero had thought was unbearable awkwardness between two people ramped up exponentially when a third was added. In the face of the uncomfortable not-conversation, Nero muttered something about needing to clean his gun and hurried upstairs to retrieve his case from the locker in his closet. Part of him wanted to hide out up here, in the safety of his own bedroom, but Blue Rose really did need cleaning and he knew Kyrie hated the smell of the solvent.

When Nero returned to the living room, Lady had taken over his armchair and was paging through one of the books from the Order’s library that still lurked in stacks around the room. No matter how many boxes they stacked in the garage, it seemed that there were always more books spawning in a corner somewhere. Perhaps Zaffiro had been sneaking them into the house when they weren’t looking, or perhaps the Order’s demonology books really did multiply when left unattended. Spontaneously reproducing books would not have been the strangest of Agnus’s innovations.

Nero spread a heavily-soiled square of canvas on the coffee table and laid out his cleaning supplies before gently placing Blue Rose on the material. Lady glanced over, curious. “You’re using a brush?”

“Always have.” Nero opened the cylinder and peered inside. Rose was filthy, poor thing. As he opened the bottle of solvent, he noticed Lady still watching. “Shouldn’t I be?”

She shrugged. “Personal preference. You can try my snake if you like. It’s a little quicker, for light cleaning. Easier on the bore, too.” She reached behind her chair and slid open one of the windows to vent the chemical smell.

“Maybe later. It’s been a while since I’ve given her a full cleaning, and she’s pretty caked up.” He twisted the bristles over a stubborn patch of residue, then switched out his bronze brush for a steel one and poked at the spot again. “Normally I do this in the van on the way back from jobs, but things have been a little hectic lately, so I’ve been using that time to grab a nap whenever I can. Besides, with Nico’s driving, it’s hard to keep things on the table.” He capped the solvent and reached for the oil. “You want anything cleaned, while I’ve got the stuff out?”

Lady shook her head. “I only put a few rounds through my nine-mil, and it was clean to start. And I don’t think Kalina Ann will fit on your coffee table. I’ll save that for the garage.”

“Yeah, that’s probably for the best. Kyrie would have kittens if she saw that thing in here.” Nero finished with the oil and gave Blue Rose a final rub-down with a soft cloth. The pistol didn’t polish up as well as she should have; there were splotches of grime wedged in the fine engraving. Nero sighed and dug a much-abused toothbrush out of his kit to scrub at the flowers cut into the side plate. He loved the look of the Rose, and he was _damn_ proud of her, but he was never again engraving this much surface detail into any weapon he made.

Nero glanced up from his work, curious if Vergil had noticed the workmanship of his gun, or if he was even aware that Nero had engineered it specifically for devil hunting and tooled the entire mechanism by hand. He’d never seen Vergil handle any firearm—it wasn’t as though he needed one, considering those blue-flame swords he could pull from thin air—and for all Nero knew, he was completely indifferent to them, but somewhere deep within Nero resided a child who had never had a crayon drawing magneted to a refrigerator door, and he was due some paternal approbation. Was it too much to hope for his father to notice and praise his creative endeavors?

Apparently so, for Vergil was deeply engrossed in something he was reading, and hadn’t looked up. Nero flicked his gaze to Lady, who also had a gilt-edged volume spread across her knees. “So what’s that you’re reading? Anything good?”

“Research.” Lady tipped the book upright to show him the cover. The title was Something Something _Daemonium_ , he thought, though the leather was badly damaged and he could barely make out any of the letters. “It never hurts to know more about what we’re fighting.”

Vergil, predictably, surfaced the moment the conversation turned to books. He glanced at Lady’s book, then bent forward to scan the stack beside her chair and selected a smaller volume from near the floor. “You’d probably be most interested in this one, then. It contains details on the physiological makeup of various demons, including their vulnerabilities.”

Lady opened the book he offered and raised her eyebrows. “Now that _is_ interesting. How did you know?”

“I’ve read it.”

She turned the ancient volume over in her hands. “And here I thought we kept most of the books on demonology out of the reach of children.”

“You did. I read it during my last visit to Fortuna.”

“Oh? When was that? Dante told me he hadn’t been here in a few years.”

Vergil turned to Nero. “How old are you, Nero?”

Nero blinked at the question. “Twenty-five.”

Vergil made a gesture that expressed that Nero’s answer stood for his own, then returned to the book he’d been reading.

The casual reference to his own origins stunned him for a moment, but when it had sunk in, Nero held up a hand. “Hold on. These books are from the Order’s _internal_ research library. They weren’t even available to most members of the Order, much less to outsiders. How the hell did you get access to them?”

“It was not… authorized, strictly speaking.” Vergil’s gaze slid away from Nero. After a few seconds of continued scrutiny, he added, “I was given access to the library by one of the archivists.”

He was being more than usually evasive, and Lady pounced. “How did you manage that? Bribery? Subterfuge? Threatening to cut him to ribbons?”

“Her. And it was nothing of the sort. It was an… arrangement of mutual convenience.”

Lady smelled blood, and she showed her teeth. “The details of which were…?”

Vergil’s lips thinned, and he said nothing. If Nero hadn’t been watching closely, he might have missed the pink tinge creeping up his father’s neck.

Lady didn’t miss that detail, either. Her eyes went wide as she took in his reaction. “You—you _seduced a librarian?_ ”

Vergil scowled. “I wouldn’t say _seduced_. As I recall, it was mostly her idea.”

“But you actually _slept with a librarian_ to get access to the restricted section?” Lady threw her head back and laughed. “I’ve heard of bibliophiles, but that definitely wins the prize!”

Vergil was not amused by her amusement. “If I hadn’t, it’s very likely none of us would be here right now. So perhaps we can look beyond the follies of my youth and be content with the result.”

Lady wiped her eyes. “What result?” A few seconds passed before she looked over at Nero, eyes widening. “Wait… you mean the archivist was…?”

Vergil nodded, and Nero’s stomach clenched. This was more knowledge of his mother than he’d ever had, and while a part of him longed to learn everything he could, the words of every question lodged in his throat. “Um,” he managed after a few false starts. “Was she… Do you… happen to remember her name?”

The crease between Vergil’s brows deepened for an instant before his face smoothed. “You don’t know?”

Nero shook his head. “I was just… found on a doorstep.” He tried to grin, but the effort hurt. “I don’t know my real birthday, or name, or anything.”

There was a flash of tension across Vergil’s face—was that _guilt?_ Surely not—and then he closed his eyes, concentrating. “Bianca,” he said after a moment. “Her name was Bianca.”

“Bianca,” Nero repeated. He laughed softly. “I guess that fits. _Bianca e Nero_.” White and black. He tried not to think about any deeper symbolism associated with those colors. “Do you remember anything else about her?”

“I believe she had worked for the Order for a few years as a researcher before being promoted to the archive. And… she must have enjoyed art. Sculpture. She had a reproduction of _The Kiss_ in her apartment.” Vergil shook his head. “I’m afraid I didn’t know her well. I was only here for a few weeks.”

“It’s more than I knew before. Thanks.” Nero silently repeated _Bianca_ in his head, trying to imagine a face to put with the name.

Lady was frowning. “She’d worked for the Order for a few _years_? How old was she?”

Vergil’s head canted in an approximation of a shrug. “Mid-twenties, at a guess.”

Lady’s eyebrows arched. “So she was a cradle-robber, too.”

Vergil, more ruffled by this than Nero had ever seen him, actually rolled his eyes. “I was _nineteen_. Hardly a child.”

“Hardly more than one. That’s about the time we met, remember? You were a cocky little shit.”

“Don’t confuse me with Dante,” Vergil scoffed. “I’d been living on my own for eleven years by that point. Life experience accelerates maturity.”

Lady’s eyes narrowed. “But not necessarily good judgment.”

Vergil’s mouth hardened. “I was not the only one who fell prey to Arkham’s manipulation.”

Lady’s body went rigid, and Nero flailed to say anything that might temper the sparks flaring between them. “Well, everybody does occasional dumb shit when they’re young. Part of growing up, right?”

“True.” Lady turned away and settled back in her chair, clearly making an effort to relax for Nero’s sake. “All right, Truthfully Assured Destruction. Nero’s up first.”

Nero groaned. “I have not consumed _nearly_ enough alcohol to play that game.”

“Game?” Vergil glanced between them, his brow furrowed.

“It’s a game where you have to answer a question truthfully, or escalate to progressively more taboo topics,” Lady explained. “Like Truth or Dare, but without the embarrassing stunts.”

Vergil’s expression remained blank, which was to be expected. Nero doubted that party games rated high on his list of life experiences. Still, considering the tension that lingered in the atmosphere, a silly game might be just the thing to break the ice. Nero turned to face Lady. “All right. Just keep it family-friendly, okay?”

“The first round always is,” Lady smirked. “We’ll keep it on-topic, though: Bad teenage choices. What’s the worst idea you ever had?”

“Had? Plenty. I’m full of bad ideas,” Nero grinned.

“The worst one you acted on, then.”

“Let’s see…” Nero’s fingers tapped idly against Blue Rose’s grip as he thought. “Back when I was first getting into modding guns, I wanted to make ammunition that exploded on impact, so I had the brilliant idea to hollow out some bullets and fill them with the thermal-ignition fuel gel we used in our swords.”

Lady’s jaw dropped. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. I mean, they _did_ explode. Just… not outside of the gun. Nearly blew my thumb off when I test-fired one. Fortunately I’d decided to try off-hand first.” He waggled the fingers of his right hand thoughtfully. “It’s funny—for some reason, it’s always _this_ arm that gets screwed. First the gun, then that demon in the woods, then…” He trailed off when he realized Vergil had gone very still, and recalled that he’d been trying to _lighten_ the mood. He forced a laugh. “Good thing I figured out how to regrow limbs. Probably my body’s way of telling me it knows most of my big ideas are shit.” He turned back to Lady. “Okay, turnabout. What’s the worst idea _you_ ever had?”

There was an instant’s flicker of something like panic in her eyes, but it quickly vanished behind a wink. “Oh, I’ve never had a bad idea in my life. I’m perfect.”

Nero snorted. “Okay, Little Miss Perfect, I’ll modify the question: What thing have you done in your perfect life that you most regretted doing later? Be honest, now. This game was your idea.”

Her smile turned brittle, and it took her a moment to answer. “Killing my father,” she said quietly. “Not that he shouldn’t have died, or that it shouldn’t have been me. I wanted to end it myself. I just… Dante offered to do it for me, and now I kind of wish I’d let him.” She sighed. “Though if I had, maybe I’d resent him for it, and I wouldn’t want that, either.”

“To be fair,” Vergil said into the heavy silence that descended after Lady’s confession, “we _all_ killed Arkham at one point or another. I thought I’d finished him off myself on two separate occasions. The man had an irritating habit of not staying dead.”

Lady hummed thoughtfully, and her eyes shifted to Vergil. “Kind of like someone else I know. Come to think of it, how many times _have_ you died?”

“That depends on your definition of death.”

“Ballpark estimate?”

He paused to consider. “Somewhere between two and six.”

Lady gave a low whistle. Nero felt himself gaping, and closed his mouth by an act of will. “And on that note, I think it’s your turn. Worst decision of your life?”

Vergil’s fingers traced the edge of the book in his lap. “There have been several I regret in hindsight. But I always had good reason at the time for making the choices I did.”

“Always?” Nero’s eyebrows shot up. “From what I heard, you once threw yourself into hell just to spite Dante.”

“That wasn’t the reason.” Vergil scowled. “Well. Not the _only_ reason. And in my defense, it had been a bit of a day.”

“It certainly had,” Lady agreed.

Nero kept his eyes fixed on Vergil. “The Qliphoth wasn’t a bad idea?”

“In retrospect, the complications it presented exceeded the benefits. But at the time, it served my purpose.”

“Served Urizen’s purpose, maybe,” Lady put in.

“What about splitting yourself in two with the Yamato?”

“I would have died otherwise.”

“Precedent indicates it wouldn’t have stuck,” Lady stage whispered. She was enjoying this.

Nero snapped his fingers. “I’ve got one. Sandals with leather clubwear.”

Vergil grimaced. “ _I_ would never. More to the point, that wasn’t my decision. I—my… human incarnation was constrained by his circumstances. He had no choice but to take what Griffon provided.”

“The demon chicken made those fashion choices?” Lady cackled. “That explains a lot, actually.”

“Not exactly, but he selected the target who did. And that man was no better judge of style.”

“Urizen wasn’t exactly a snappy dresser, either,” Nero pointed out. “The whole slimy tentacle thing is kinda B-grade horror.”

“Nor did Urizen seek my opinion regarding his appearance. Form is less vital to most demons than function.”

“Now _that_ I can believe,” Lady said. “Trish is the only one I’ve ever seen with any kind of fashion sense.”

Vergil huffed through his nose. “You clearly never saw my father.”

Nero stared at him. He’d never once heard Dante speak of his father, and while Zaffiro had shared a single memory under duress, he certainly hadn’t expected it from Vergil. “Sparda?”

Vergil nodded. “He was very traditional. Dressed for every possible occasion, and always for peak dramatic effect.”

“Huh. I would never have guessed.”

Vergil cocked an eyebrow at him. “I hope that’s not a commentary on my appearance.” He reconsidered. “Well. Maybe Dante’s.”

Nero laughed. “No, I just meant that I hadn’t seen him depicted that way. I mean, when I was growing up, nearly every public building here had a statue or painting of Sparda somewhere, but he was always dressed in some kind of flowing robes, doing that angry-god pose.” Nero held out his hands as though balanced on a sword and mimicked the stern expression. “You know?”

Vergil nodded. “He did use that pose, but only when one of us had done something worthy of punishment.”

Some primal part of Nero coiled in apprehension at the thought of being punished by the Legendary Dark Knight Sparda. “Such as?”

There was a definite smugness in the set of Vergil’s lips. “Dante once tried to swing from one side of the gallery to the other on the chandelier. He slipped off and flew head-first through a four hundred-year-old stained-glass window.”

The memory of pulling the twins off his roof a few weeks earlier made the scenario all too easy for Nero to picture. “That seems like a very Dante thing to do.”

Vergil’s smirk deepened. “It was not _entirely_ his own idea.”

Lady cocked an eyebrow. “And yet, why do I have this feeling that he’s the only one who got in trouble for it?”

“I couldn’t possibly have been involved. After all, I was studying in another room when it happened. I couldn’t be expected to keep watch on my younger brother _all_ the time.”

Nero could almost hear the words, spoken in Zaffiro’s voice. “Wow. And your parents actually bought that line?”

Vergil gave a mild shrug. “It happened to be true. I went in the other room the moment Dante climbed up on the banister.”

“You devious bastard.” Lady shook her head. “I don’t know whether to be outraged on Dante’s behalf, or impressed that you actually managed to pull off a setup like that.”

“I’m sure Dante got his revenge sooner or later.” Nero turned back to Vergil. “I seem to recall something about your mother threatening to lock you both in a vault…?”

“An idle threat, perhaps, but one we frequently earned.” Vergil’s gaze went a bit distant, and then he looked thoughtful.

“I’ll bet.” Nero noted the sudden change in expression and wondered just what had triggered it. “I guess I’ll file that story with all the other juicy family secrets I’ve uncovered lately.”

Vergil seemed to return to the present and opened the book in his lap again. “I’m sure that’s a slender file.”

“It’s bigger than you might think.” Nero had learned of his father’s childhood trauma, his nightmares, his years of torture and slavery. He’d learned how close the twin brothers had once been, before fate and Mundus had conspired to separate them. But none of that seemed appropriate to bring up now. “For one thing, I now know that you play violin.”

Vergil shook his head. “Played. That was a long time ago.”

“Nah, I bet you could pick it up again in a heartbeat if you wanted, since you’re basically a prodigy at everything.”

Vergil looked up from the book to stare at him. “I’m a _what_?”

Nero felt heat rushing to his ears. He hadn’t meant for the compliment to slip out, but there was no downplaying it now. “Come on. You speak at least four languages, and you can remember details about books you read a quarter century ago. Pretty sure that qualifies you as a genius.”

“Merely the result of intensive study,” Vergil said mildly.

“You were reading Latin at age five.”

“Because I’d been taught from age three.” He folded his hands over the book. “Where did you learn your swordsmanship?”

The change in topic caught Nero off-guard. “With the Order’s Holy Knights. Credo—Kyrie’s brother—was the Supreme General. He strong-armed me into joining up when I turned sixteen.”

“And how often did you train?”

“Every single day, at the ass-crack of dawn,” Nero groaned. “And extra training most afternoons, since I was usually late to morning practice. Thank you, Lieutenant Lauda,” he added under his breath.

Vergil ignored the addition. “And through that repetition, you acquired fluency in those skills, cultivated your reflexes, and strengthened your body. Anyone observing you now would assume you had a natural talent for combat, because your execution appears effortless.” He picked up the book again. “Ability is never attained without effort.”

“I guess.” Nero stored away Vergil’s rare praise to unpack later, and let his gaze fall to at the book in his father’s hands. “I’m pretty sure the foreign language bus skipped my stop, though. If Kyrie hadn’t tutored me, I never would have made it through second-year Italian. I’d never manage something like Latin.”

“You could, if you were properly motivated.” One of Vergil’s eyebrows twitched as he swept the room with his gaze. “Though having seen how you live, I don’t know when you’d find the time.”

“Yeah, that’s definitely a thing.” Nero looked around the shabby, cluttered living room and reluctantly got to his feet. “And I should probably be using this time while the kids are away to clean up the house, because I can never get enough done when they’re here.”

Lady started to rise. “Do you want us to help?”

Nero waved her back down as he went behind the sofa to collect a box. “Nah, it’s fine. I’m just gonna start moving some of these boxes out to the garage. Or just straight to the trash. We probably don’t need to keep these old personnel files…” He trailed off as he stared into the box in his arms. It was packed with manila file folders. The one Nico had pulled free weeks before read _Laboratory_ on the tab. “Holy shit.”

Nero dropped the box over the back of the sofa and reached for the next one. The heavy parcel bounced on the cushion, and Vergil righted it before it could topple. “What is it?”

Nero heaved two more file boxes onto the seat before leaping over the couch himself. “These files Nico found! They’re the old department staff records from the castle. Every department housed in that building, I’ll bet.” He tugged files out of the first box at random, checking the department listed on the folder. “Labs, Acquisitions, Medical… It’s got to be here somewhere!”

Lady moved to peer over his shoulder. “I’ll help, if you tell me what you’re looking for.”

“Anything to do with the research library. Archives, Library, Books, look for anything like that.”

With nods of understanding, Vergil and Lady each claimed a box. After a minute of searching, Lady held up a file. “Here’s one marked _Biblio_. Could that be it?”

“Yes! Pull anything from that department.” Nero took the folder from her hand and checked the label, which read _Sarafino, T._ Inside was a work history with a small black-and-white ID photo pasted to it. Sarafino, T. turned out to be a pudgy man in his fifties. Nero picked up the next folder, which belonged to _Belarosa, C_., a dark-skinned woman of about thirty. “Dammit! There’s no first names on any of these. How am I gonna find her if—”

“Give them here.” Vergil gently prised the file from Nero’s trembling fingers, then collected a thick stack of folders from Lady. Nero clenched his fists, scarcely daring to breathe as his father opened each file and examined the photograph inside.

_It shouldn_ _’t matter this much_ , he told himself as the wait dragged on. _Whoever she is, she_ _’s long gone. It hasn’t made any difference to your last twenty-five years, and it won’t change anything for the future_. But even as he tried to convince himself of his own indifference, the anxiety built until his heart was hammering as fast as it had been in the seconds after Dante had told him Vergil was his father.

There were only a few files left in Vergil’s stack when he wordlessly offered one to Nero. Nero looked at the folder, then at Vergil, and back to the file before slowly closing his fingers on it. The name on the tab read _Lucentio, B_. With the truth lying in his hands, Nero almost couldn’t summon the courage to open the folder, but at last he swallowed the stone in his throat and turned back the cover.

Staring back at him from a monochrome snapshot was a fair-haired woman with a bright smile. She looked to be a couple of years younger than Kyrie, which was jarring; somehow Nero hadn’t realized that his mother must have been younger than he was now when he was born.

“She’s pretty.” Lady was craning her neck to see the photo. “You have the same nose.”

Nero merely nodded, not trusting his voice. He wasn’t sure what he _should_ be feeling in this situation, but the swirling sensations in his chest were a bewildering vortex of grief and joy and anger and relief. He stared at the photo for what must have been minutes; he ceased being aware of anything happening around him until he heard the garage door and realized Vergil and Lady had packed up the rest of the file boxes and carried them out.

“Thanks,” he murmured when they had returned. “Sorry. I was going to do that.”

“It’s fine. You were busy.” Lady flashed him a smile and returned to her chair, while Vergil wordlessly picked up his discarded book.

Nero shook himself out of his stupor. He needed to get his racing thoughts in order and vent them. Somewhere else. “I’m, uh, going to put this upstairs. I want to show it to Kyrie when she gets back.”

Secure in his own bedroom, Nero propped the file reverently against the mirror over their dresser and bent low to gaze at it once more. He drew a long breath. “Um. Hello… mother,” he whispered. “Mom? I don’t even know what to call you, but it’s nice to finally meet you. I’m Nero. I… I don’t know if you ever gave me a different name. There’s a lot I don’t know about you, and I probably never will. But… I guess I’m glad to finally learn where I came from.”

It may have been a silly exercise, but he felt lighter having expressed himself. He took a few seconds more to compare his mother’s photograph with his own reflection— _Lady_ _’s right, we really_ do _have the same nose_ —before returning to the living room.

Lady was still curled up in the armchair, paging through the book Vergil had recommended. Vergil was seated at one end of the couch, his long legs extended before him and only his eyes moving as he devoured the text in his hand. The console clock carried on ticking in the background, the only sound in the room except when one of them flicked over a page.

Nero knelt by the table to finish putting away his cleaning gear, and the conflicted emotions fluttering in his midsection began to settle at last. This scene was mundane, but peaceful. Like this, he could almost envision them as a normal family, enjoying a quiet day at home—if you ignored the custom revolver on the table, the books on demonology, and the fact that Lady was in no way related to either of them.

Still, it felt good to be a part of such a calm, grounded moment. It reminded him of those precious evenings he’d spent here in his early childhood, when Kyrie’s parents had allowed her to rescue her favorite playmate from the orphanage for a home-cooked meal. After supper, he and Kyrie would sprawl on the floor to color, while Kyrie’s parents sat in the places Vergil and Lady now occupied, reading or sewing or writing letters in the soft orange glow of the lamp. Credo would settle at the end of the sofa with his schoolwork, pages rustling, the clock ticking in the background…

“Challenging Mundus,” Vergil said suddenly.

The domestic vision faded abruptly. Nero blinked, and it was the middle of the afternoon, and harsh sunlight glinted off the barrel of his revolver, and the sharp odor of solvent emanated from the bore brush in his hand. He turned to stare at Vergil, who was wearing a pensive frown. “What?”

“Challenging Mundus,” Vergil repeated, “when I was badly injured, and already fatigued from battling Arkham and Dante in succession. _That_ was the worst idea I ever had.”

Lady laughed at the _non sequitur_ , and Nero just shook his head as he hefted the reassuring weight of Blue Rose. The idyllic scene in his memory was a beautiful dream, but he wouldn’t trade this crazy family of his for _anything_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bianca Lucentio translates very roughly to “White Light,” which I chose because it seemed a perfect counterpart for Nero Angelo (and their son). But for those playing along at home, it is also yet another Shakespeare reference (the names of the secondary lovers from _The Taming of the Shrew_ ). Like many other writers in DMC fandom, I’ve used Shakespearean names for all the cities, because… well, after Capulet City, it seems a rather obvious naming convention. Anyway, I was pleased that I managed to get both the symbolism _and_ the lit nerd jokes in here!


	47. Chapter 47

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double-length chapter today! Originally this was split into two parts for length, but I thought it worked better as one continuous scene. Besides, it's the middle of winter (in my hemisphere) and I figured someone among my readers could use a bonus to compensate for the bleak weather. Grab a mug of cocoa or tea and enjoy. (Southern Hemisphere residents, adjust your beverage temperature as needed.) ;-)

Within a few hours, Nero had reversed his stance, and was more than ready to trade his companions away for… well, for just about anything _,_ within reason. A couple of ordinary rocks. A set of crying two-year-olds. A pair of rabid badgers, perhaps. _Anything_ would have been less harrowing than being trapped in the house with both Lady and Vergil.

Despite the peaceful interlude in the afternoon, the strange antagonism that had hovered between them during lunch returned and intensified by dinner time. Nero couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause; perhaps the small house was too confining, or perhaps there was just a limit to how long former enemies could remain civil to one another, but the tension ratcheted up gradually throughout the evening. Lady’s snark grew sharper, and Vergil’s tolerance for her barbs waned until Nero feared there would be bloodshed over the dinner table. He caught himself eying their flatware and wondering how quickly he could confiscate it with his spectral arm, when he’d recalled that Vergil could summon swords from thin air and Lady used her fists and feet as often as her guns.

It was a relief when Lady stormed off to her room after the meal, and Nero saw his chance to retreat safely upstairs. He pointed Vergil toward the laundry room for clean linens, if he wanted them, and left him to fend for himself. Kyrie probably wouldn’t have approved of his abandoning a guest without a readied bed, but there were plenty of empty bunks and a perfectly serviceable sofa available, and Vergil was a grown man who could damn well figure out how to put on his own pillowcase.

The next morning, Nero descended to the kitchen with some trepidation, but Lady avoided a breakfast rematch by sneaking some toast and coffee back to her room before Vergil made his appearance. Lunch, however, brought a near-disastrous rekindling of hostilities.

“It’s so quiet around here without the kids,” Lady observed as she pulled her chair closer to Nero’s end of the table. “I almost don’t recognize this kitchen without eight people crammed into it.”

“Well, enjoy the peace while it lasts.” Nero passed out their plates and tried not to think about how his words might just as easily apply to the pair in the room with him. “The whole pack’ll be back tonight, and I’m sure they’ll bring even more than the usual amount of drama home with them. I predict assorted bruises, several skinned knees, and at least one case of poison ivy.”

“You think?”

“It’s almost guaranteed, turning six kids loose in the woods. It doesn’t matter how clearly the trails are marked or how close you watch them. They _love_ getting into stuff.”

“Five kids,” Lady corrected. “At least, only five who can come back scraped up. I’m sure Dante has been getting into loads of trouble, too, but at least any damage he’s taken will have healed by the time he gets home.” She stopped and shook her head. “ _Tony_. I mean Tony. I’ve got to get back in the habit so I don’t slip up in front of the kids.”

“Yeah, it always takes me a minute to remember what name he’s going by now, too.” Nero paused to fork a few bites of food into his mouth. “Actually, I wonder how long he’ll _stay_ Tony. Do you know when he switched back to using his real name?”

Lady shrugged. “No idea. He’s always been Dante since I’ve known him.”

“He was seventeen,” Vergil said.

The sound of his voice startled Nero; Vergil had settled quietly at the far end of the table, and hadn’t spoken to either of them since entering the kitchen. “Oh?”

Lady’s eyes narrowed. “And just how do you know that?”

Vergil returned the look. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because you hadn’t met him then.”

Vergil gave a mocking huff. “Considering we were together from before birth, I find that statement rather unsupportable.”

“You know what I mean,” she snapped. “Dante said he didn’t even know you were still alive until the year before Temen-ni-gru.”

“And you believe Dante tells you everything, do you?”

Lady bristled. “I believe what he tells me a hell of a lot more than I believe anything you say.”

Vergil leaned back in his chair. “At the risk of upsetting your precious notion that you are Dante’s sole confidant and privy to his every secret, there is a great deal about his life that he hasn’t shared with you. Clearly, our first reunion falls into that category.” He cocked an eyebrow. “And I rather suspect our second, as well. It doesn’t reflect well on him, so naturally, he wouldn’t wish to recount it, even to someone as sycophantic as you.”

“Oh, if we’re going to talk about selective memory and unflattering events, I can bring up something a _lot_ more recent,” Lady snarled, half-rising from her seat.

Thus far, Nero had attempted to stay out of their arguments, but in that instant he realized he could _feel_ the radiation of Vergil’s energy the way he’d felt Berial’s, or Goliath’s, or any of the other powerful demons he’d fought. It was a sensation he’d experienced only once before in Vergil’s presence—and that had been atop the Qliphoth, mere seconds before Vergil had unleashed a staggering amount of power and transformed into his winged devil form.

As much as he preferred to let Lady and Vergil sort out their own differences, he wasn’t keen on remodeling his house, and he had a feeling things were about to get _really_ messy if he didn’t intervene. Nero jumped to his feet and extended a hand toward each adversary, feeling like a referee in a boxing match. “Okay, time out. You two wanna kill each other, you take it outside. You’re sure as hell not doing this in my kitchen.”

The momentary distraction succeeded in suspending the escalation of hostilities, but Lady shoved her chair back anyway. “I think I will go outside, actually. The company’s more agreeable there.” With a final deadly glare at Vergil, she stalked out of the kitchen. The front door slammed a few seconds later.

A moment later, Vergil stood and wordlessly left the room. Nero listened for the front door in case he was going after Lady, but all he heard was the sagging of the armchair springs in the front room. He released the breath he’d been holding and looked at the table and the plates of half-eaten food. “I guess I’m on dish duty, then,” he muttered.

He was just setting the first plate in the dish drainer when the telephone rang. “I called as soon as we got within range,” Kyrie told him, raising her voice over the road noise and children’s chatter in the background. “I wanted to let you know we were on our way back. The weather turned suddenly, so we’ll be home a bit earlier than planned.”

“Good to know.” At least he wouldn’t be trapped _alone_ in the house with Lady and Vergil. Kyrie was a better peacemaker, anyway. “What’s your ETA?”

He heard Kyrie cover the receiver to speak to Nico. “Twenty minutes,” she said a moment later. “Unless you need us to stop anywhere? It could be longer, if you, ah, need… anything from the store.”

“No, there’s no need to stall. You can head straight home.”

“Oh, good.” He could hear the relief in her voice. “I was afraid we’d be interrupting if we came back this early. How did everything go?”

“Well… About as well as we could have hoped for, I guess.” _Minus some excessive trauma, and some serious attitude we could all do without_ , he added silently. He didn’t want to get into that over the phone, though. “Vergil’s back to normal.”

“Thank goodness,” she sighed. “It sounds like you’ll have some things to explain to the children when we get home.”

“Yeah. When you get here, let’s try to corral them outside, okay? It’ll be easier to tell them we have a new house guest before they just run into the house and see a stranger.”

“I’ll do my best. Wait for us in the garage, if you can.”

“Will do. See you soon.”

Lady hadn’t returned, but Nero knew he should warn Vergil of the impending arrival. Of course, that meant speaking to Vergil, which was not high on Nero’s list of preferred activities at the moment. He braced himself before moving to the living room. “Hey,” he said from the doorway. Vergil’s eyes flicked up from the book in his lap, and Nero forced out, “Kyrie and the kids will be here in twenty minutes.”

Vergil gave a minute nod and returned to his book, and Nero retreated to the kitchen to release the frustrated growl he’d been holding in. It seemed impossible that less than twenty-four hours ago he’d actually been enjoying his father’s company, even feeling _grateful_ to him for telling him about his mother—and now he was back to wanting to put his fist through something every time they made eye contact. Through Vergil’s incisors, preferably.

Nero had time to finish the dishes and pace thirty-seven anxious circuits of the garage before the monstrous vehicle roared up in front of the house. The van slowed long enough to allow Kyrie to alight, then rattled off again.

Kyrie hurried inside and submitted to Nero’s welcoming kiss before speaking. “We only have a few minutes. Nico’s going for fuel, and I told the children they could each pick out a candy from the jar at the station if they went with her.”

“Quick thinking. Did everything go okay? Everyone have a good time?”

“Oh, the children had a lovely time. It may have been a mistake to introduce them to the concept of toasted marshmallows, though,” she laughed. “I think they’re going to be requesting that for dessert for the next few weeks.’

“Well, there are worse vices. At least marshmallows are cheap. I’m glad they had fun, though. No demon trouble?”

“None that I’m aware of. Trish ventured out on her own a couple of times, but if she hunted anything, she didn’t report it to me. She may have just been looking for a few minutes’ peace and quiet.”

“That’s understandable. How did the kids behave?”

“As good as gold—well, except for Tony. I’m sure he was just anxious about his brother, but it made him a bit… difficult to manage. He was so worked up, I don’t know if he slept at all the whole weekend, poor lamb. I finally let him sit up on the van roof with Trish all night. That was the only thing that calmed him down.”

Nero’s eyebrows shot up. “Trish agreed to this?”

“She’s the one who suggested it.” Kyrie shrugged. “Maybe he’s old enough now that he reminds her of Dante, so she doesn’t mind being around him. Oh! Speaking of people growing up…” Kyrie’s eyes swung past Nero and fixed on the steps that led up into the house. “Is there anything I should know before I meet your father?”

“Only that he’s a complete asshole.” Kyrie’s eyes widened, but before she could chide him for the statement, Nero shook his head. “I know, but it’s true. I’m pretty sure he had better social skills as a three-year-old. He and Lady have been at each other’s throats ever since he woke up. There was a brief cease-fire yesterday after lunch, and for about an hour I thought Vergil might actually have rediscovered his chill during his time as a little kid, but then last night it all hit the fan again. When he’s not being a complete ice queen, it’s like he goes out of his way to be as abrasive as possible. Meal times have been a special kind of hell. It got so bad at lunch that Lady decided to take up jogging just to get away from him.”

“Oh, dear.” Kyrie’s brows pushed together. “I hope they don’t keep that up around the children.”

“I think Lady, at least, knows how to behave in front of the kids. Vergil doesn’t strike me as the type who would tolerate being around children any longer than he absolutely had to, so if we’re lucky they’ll all just avoid each other.”

“Vergil may _want_ to avoid them,” Kyrie sighed, “but the house is small, and you know how curious the children are. We’ll have to make sure they don’t pester him.”

“Well, if he gets too annoyed, he’ll probably just cut out and leave.”

Kyrie frowned. “Do you really think he would? Even with his brother here, and the Nilepoch still out there?”

Before Nero could answer, the van returned, and Nico reversed it into its space in the garage with expert precision. The engine had scarcely died when the side door swung open and a half-dozen bodies, led by Rosso, tumbled out into the garage.

“Whoa, hold up there!” Nero threw out his arms and captured Rosso and Kyle as they tried to bolt past him. “Nobody goes into the house yet! I have some announcements first.”

Kyle obediently stepped back to wait with the rest of the children, but Rosso squirmed against Nero’s grip. “I want to see my brother!”

Nero caught himself just short of saying _in a minute_ , and corrected it to, “You can’t. He’s not here.”

That got everyone’s attention, but Rosso set his jaw. “He is so! I can feel—”

“Tony.” Kyrie’s gentle voice silenced the garage more effectively than any shouting could have done. “Why don’t we listen to what Nero has to tell us first?”

Rosso seemed about to protest again, but Trish, who had descended from the van in the children’s wake, put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “What’s the news?”

“Two things.” Nero marveled at how docile Rosso became once Trish reined him in. He’d have to ask her what the trick was. “First, like I just said, Zaffiro isn’t here. You know he didn’t go with you because he had that doctor appointment, right?” Most of the children nodded, though Julio was frowning. “Well, the doctor decided he should see a specialist at one of those fancy children’s hospitals on the mainland, so Zaffiro got to take a little vacation.”

“Is Zaffiro sick?” Flavia’s face scrunched with worry. “Will he be okay?”

“Oh, yeah, he’ll be fine,” Nero assured her. “You remember how I told you a couple months ago that the twins were growing really fast because of a, uh, gland disorder?” Rosso looked startled at that, but Nero hurried on with his story before he could interrupt. “Well, somebody found a medicine that might be able to cure them, so the doctors are going to see if it helps Zaffiro. If it does, then in a little while Tony can go join his brother and get treated, too.”

This was too much for Rosso. “But I don’t need to go anywhere to join him,” he burst. “He’s here!”

“Tony, calm down.” Trish placed her other hand on the boy’s opposite shoulder.

Rosso twisted to look up at her. “But I can feel him! Can’t you? He’s right inside—”

Trish’s face revealed that she could. “Maybe we should listen to the rest of Nero’s news, huh? We can’t go in the house and see who’s waiting until he tells us everything he wants to.”

Rosso slumped back against her in sullen capitulation. Nero gave her a nod of thanks before addressing the rest of the children. “The other thing you all need to know is that we have a house guest.”

“Another one?” Carlo glanced around the garage, as though expecting to see another motorcycle parked beside Lady’s. “Besides Miss Trish and Miss Lady?”

“That’s right. This guest is called… Mister Vergil.” Nero had difficulty forcing the words out; the mundane honorific sounded ridiculous, appended to Vergil’s name. He could imagine Vergil being addressed as something pretentious like _Exalted Dark Lord_ , and he himself had no problem shouting _Hey, asshole!_ to attract his father’s attention, but anything between the two extremes just seemed wrong. “Now, the reason he’s not waiting out here to meet you is because he’s not used to being around kids, and he kind of likes his space. So I want you all to be really polite to him, okay? Don’t go asking him a lot of questions or trying to sit on his lap or anything. It’s not that he doesn’t like you,” he added, seeing Kyle’s frown, “it’s that he’s… had kind of a rough time lately, and needs a lot of peace and quiet.” That was half true, at least. “Do you all think you can do that for me? Can you respect his space so he can get plenty of rest?”

There was a chorus of answering affirmatives from the children. Trish looked amused at the very concept of Vergil needing rest, and Julio’s jaw had dropped at the revelation of the guest’s name and had never closed again. As Kyrie directed the children in unloading their bags from the van, Julio sidled over to Nero. “Vergil,” the boy whispered. “That’s your dad’s name, right?”

“Yep.”

Julio’s eyes were wide. “So Zaffiro…?”

“Grew up.” Nero scowled. “Sort of. Don’t ask him about anything, though; he doesn’t know any of you know.”

“No, no, I won’t. Peace and quiet. I heard you.” Julio screwed up his cheek in an attempt at winking.

Nero suppressed a chuckle and shoved him toward the van. “Scram. Go get your stuff before Nico locks up.” Nero glanced around, realizing he hadn’t actually seen Nico since the van’s arrival. He checked the driver’s seat, then stepped outside the garage—directly into a cloud of cigarette smoke. “Damn it, Nico,” he choked. “Could you not wait until the kids got inside the house?”

Nico rolled her eyes, but finished taking a long drag before answering. “No, I could not,” she snapped, smoke pouring from her lips with each word. “I been campin’ with those little _angels_ o’ yours for two full days. Ain’t had a moment to myself. Only time I could grab a smoke all weekend was after they all went t’ bed, an’ then Tony wouldn’t sleep an’ started sittin’ up with Trish, so I had to hike all th’ way out in th’ woods so none of ‘em could see me. Ended up in a patch o’ somethin’ poisonous.” She rubbed the ankle of one of her Western boots against the opposite knee, where Nero could see the flush of a rash spreading over the skin. He mentally ticked the “poison ivy” box on his prediction list. “So ex-queeze me for smokin’ th’ instant I _finally_ get the chance.”

“You know, you wouldn’t have these problems if you’d just quit—”

“Shut it!” She jabbed the cigarette butt in Nero’s direction. “I ain’t in th’ mood today.”

“You never are,” Nero muttered. He left her to pollute her lungs in peace and reentered the garage, where Kyrie and Trish had efficiently emptied the van. The children were lined up by the door, bags in arms, apparently awaiting his return.

“I told them you would go in first, to make the introductions,” Kyrie told him. “Mister Vergil hasn’t met the children yet, remember?”

“Oh. Right.” Nero moved to the front of the line. “Once you’ve said hello, go on and start putting your stuff away in your rooms, all right? And I know you’ve had a pretty big weekend, so why don’t you stay in there for some quiet time. You can sleep, read, or play, as long as you do it on your own bunks.”

Rosso was nearest the door. He shouldered his backpack and met Nero’s gaze defiantly. “As soon as I’ve seen my brother.”

Nero took in the boy’s stubborn posture and decided it was no use reiterating that Zaffiro was gone. For good or ill, the twins clearly still shared their strange radar connection. He opened the door and braced himself for whatever was to come.

Vergil was ensconced in his usual chair with a book, but as the family entered the house, he set it aside and stood. Rosso had shouldered past Nero and dashed into the living room, where he drew up short. He stared at Vergil for a few seconds, glanced around the room, then took a longer look at Vergil. Gradually the confusion on his face morphed into uncertainty, then anxiety.

Vergil, impassive, returned Rosso’s stare.

The other children had filed into the room behind Rosso, standing politely and waiting to be identified to the new house guest. Vergil returned only nods as Nero went through the motions of introducing them. Naturally Vergil already knew all the children’s names, but Kyrie was right: It would have looked odd if they had skipped the ritual completely.

Soon all the children but Rosso had disappeared down the hall. Rosso remained frozen where he had entered, eyes locked on Vergil. “Tony?” Kyrie prompted, touching the boy’s shoulder. “Is everything all right?”

“What did you do?” The words were a ragged whisper, and Nero wasn’t sure to whom the question was directed. “What did you do to my brother?”

Nero glanced to Vergil, hoping he would offer some explanation of his transformation, but Vergil hadn’t so much as blinked. _Asshole_ , Nero tossed at him silently. “Okay… I know this is a lot to take in, but… you remember when I told you about your memories?”

Rosso wasn’t listening. His eyes were still fixed on Vergil. “I want my brother back.”

“Well, that’s the thing.” Nero ran a hand through his hair. “He _is_ back. Back the way he should be. And you…”

Rosso’s head was swinging slowly from side to side. “I want my brother back.”

Vergil’s eyes narrowed fractionally. “Dante.”

At that single word, Rosso blanched. He recoiled a step, fingers digging into the straps of his backpack, then turned and bolted from the room. They heard the door to the boys’ bedroom slam behind him.

Trish was the first to recover. “That went well.”

Kyrie continued looking after Rosso. “It must have been quite a shock. Should we go after him and try to explain?”

“Probably not until he calms down.” Nero leaned against the back of the couch. “With luck, he’ll remember that he hasn’t slept in three days and crash for a while.”

“But what if he lashes out at the other children? He seemed so upset…”

“Julio’s still top dog, where the boys are concerned. He’ll keep things civil. And if anything serious kicks off, all he has to do is open the door and call us.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Kyrie didn’t look entirely convinced.

“Anyway,” Nero went on, “Kyrie, Vergil. Vergil, Kyrie. Introductions officially complete.”

“Oh! Where are my manners?” Kyrie stepped forward, hands clasped tightly at her diaphragm. “It’s so nice to finally meet you.” She smiled warmly at Vergil, betraying little of the nervousness Nero could sense from her. “Properly, I mean.”

“Indeed,” Vergil replied. Since Rosso’s abrupt departure, he hadn’t so much as batted an eyelid. Nero experienced a sudden desire to punch him in the jaw, just to see if it produced a reaction.

“Well.” Trish sauntered through the middle of the awkward social stand-off and draped herself across the couch. “I’d say it’s good to have you back, Vergil, but I really couldn’t care less.”

“That sentiment is mutual.” Vergil resumed his seat, though Nero was relieved to see that he didn’t immediately bury his face in a book. “Though now that we’re both here, it seems we have some business to discuss. The Nilepoch is our common enemy.”

“I do have some news on that front—though we might as well wait for Lady to get here.” Trish stretched, catlike. “No point in going over all of this twice.”

There was an uncomfortable silence in the room for several seconds, until Kyrie cleared her throat. “I’ll, ah, make us some tea, then.” She brushed Nero’s sleeve as she passed. “Nero, help me in the kitchen?”

Nero was glad for the excuse to escape the room, though there wasn’t much for him to do as Kyrie put the kettle on to boil. “So now you’ve met the whole dysfunctional family,” he murmured, his voice pitched too low to carry. “What do you think?”

“He’s certainly…” Kyrie stared at the ceiling as she searched for a word. “Less… demonstrative than I’d expected.”

Nero snorted. “That’s one way of putting it. You’d get more human warmth out of that refrigerator.”

“I am concerned about Tony, though. All weekend, he was so anxious to get back home to his brother, and now he thinks we’ve done something to Zaffiro. I don’t know how all this will affect him.”

“Maybe Trish can explain it to him. They seem to be getting along well now.”

Kyrie nodded. “They do seem to have established some kind of rapport over the weekend. But you know, it’s strange… When I saw how Tony was staying near Trish most of the time, I asked her about it, and all she said was, ‘Potatoes aren’t pizza, but they beat starvation.’ I’m not sure what she was getting at, unless perhaps she meant that she was the closest substitute to Tony’s mother.”

“Or his brother, maybe.” Nero leaned back against the kitchen table. “Trish isn’t human, remember? We know Zaffiro could sense her, because he was terrified every time she came around. And in the garage a few minutes ago, Tony seemed to know that she would be able to sense Vergil as well as he could. Maybe it’s just that he can feel _something_ from her, and since he was missing his brother, he reached out toward the only other person who operates on that wavelength.”

Kyrie considered this. “That does make a certain amount of sense. After all, people who live alone will strike up conversations with complete strangers just to have some social interaction. I imagine someone who has always depended on that kind of sixth sense might feel even more isolated when it vanishes.” The kettle whistled, and she moved it off the hob before opening a cabinet over the stove. “Could you please get the cups and saucers from the top shelf? I can’t reach without standing on a chair.”

Nero stretched up to retrieve the elegant porcelain teacups that Kyrie’s mother had received as a wedding gift decades before. “We’re using the good china? Wow. I don’t think I’ve _ever_ drunk out of one of these things.”

“We might as well. After all, they’re of no use to anyone shut away in a cupboard all the time.” Kyrie flashed him a smile, and he saw a shadow of the earlier nervousness return to her face. “Besides, it isn’t every day that we have family visiting, is it?”

 _Family_. Nero thought back to the previous afternoon, when he had sat with Vergil and Lady, and the revelation it had led to. The photograph of his mother was still propped up against the mirror in their bedroom. “That reminds me, I have something to show you later tonight. Or rather…” He grinned. “Someone I want you to meet.”

* * *

Trish was just dunking the last of Kyrie’s tea cookies in her cup when Lady returned. “You’re back earlier than I expected!” Lady said, shaking the rain out of her short hair. “When I saw Nico lurking in the garage, I thought she was another prowler. I almost decked her.”

“Maybe you should have,” Nero retorted. “Nothing else is gonna interrupt her chain-smoking. I assume that’s what she’s doing out there?”

“Judging by the pile of butts that oil pan had accumulated, I’d say so. She wasn’t happy about the rain, either.” Lady shrugged out of her jacket and hung it over the closet door knob to dry before joining the group in the living room. “Did the storm chase you back here?”

Kyrie nodded. “We just got back a little while ago. Would you like some tea?”

“No, thanks. I just had a cup of coffee at that little outdoor cafe a couple of streets over. I started back when I saw the dark clouds rolling in, but I didn’t quite beat the weather.” She plucked at her damp blouse, which was rapidly turning transparent as the water seeped down from her shoulders.

Nero could pinpoint the exact moment Kyrie realized that Lady wasn’t wearing anything under the shirt, as she sprang to her feet with an exclamation. “Oh! You must be cold in all those wet things. Why don’t you go change into something dry, and I’ll bring you a towel.” She hustled Lady, protesting, toward the bedrooms.

Nero scratched at his nose and willed the heat to vanish from his face. After he’d rescued Lady—naked and covered in viscous slime—from the demon shell Artemis, it had been a while before he could face her without feeling a flush of embarrassment. Lady, for her part, had been completely at ease once she’d regained consciousness. He’d eventually realized that unlike Trish, who rather enjoyed putting on a show, Lady just didn’t seem to care who saw what parts of her. Not that her cavalier attitude made it any less awkward for Nero, who wasn’t particularly interested in looking at any woman other than Kyrie.

Nero heard low voices from down the hall, and a moment later Kyrie ushered Julio into the living room. “Tell Nero,” she prompted him. “I’ll go get the bandages.” She hurried back toward the bedrooms, a towel draped over one arm.

“Bandages?” Nero took in the anxious expression on the boy’s face and beckoned him over. “What’s up?”

“It’s Tony.” Julio’s eyes flicked to Vergil for an instant, then fixed on Nero again. “I think something’s wrong. I can tell he’s really tired, but he won’t let himself fall asleep. He just keeps whispering something to himself over and over, and pinching himself to stay awake. I tried talking to him, to get him to calm down and rest, but all he would say is that it isn’t safe to sleep any more. He’s really pale, and his eyes are bloodshot, and he was pinching himself hard enough to break the skin.”

Before Nero could come up with a response, Kyrie and Lady returned. Lady was buttoning a fresh shirt and had the towel draped around her shoulders, while Kyrie held a box of adhesive bandages and a bottle of antiseptic in her hands. “Which of the five of us is he most likely to listen to right now?” she asked, holding up the bandages.

“Given what happened earlier, I think we can count Vergil out,” Trish said.

“Agreed.” Vergil’s gaze shifted to Trish. “Though you aren’t exactly one for tea and sympathy, either.”

“Not when sad little boys just want Mommy to tell them everything will be okay, no.” The words were accompanied by a blistering eyeroll.

Vergil bristled, and Nero jumped in before their spat could escalate the way Vergil and Lady’s had. “Okay, Vergil and Trish are _both_ out.”

Lady held up her hands. “I’ll recuse myself, since I just got here and have no idea what happened earlier.”

Nero met Kyrie’s eyes. “You or me? You’re better at patching up injuries.”

“But I’m not sure that’s the most important thing right now,” Kyrie sighed. “He needs an explanation, and I think it will be better coming from you. You understand all of this better than I do, anyway.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Nero muttered, but he collected the medical supplies from her. “Julio, are the other boys awake?”

“No, they all went right out as soon as we got home. They can sleep through anything.”

“Good, that’ll make this easier. Everybody stay out of the kitchen for a bit, okay? I have a feeling he’s gonna need some space.”

Nero followed Julio to the boys’ bedroom. Rosso was braced in the far corner of his bunk, knees drawn up to his chest and arms crossed over them. Red semicircles dotted both wrists. His head lolled to one side, but at Nero’s approach he jerked fully awake and dug his fingernails deep into the flesh of his opposite arm.

“Hey,” Nero whispered, sliding his index finger beneath the boy’s hand. “Ease up a little.”

“I’m not going to sleep,” Rosso hissed.

“Fine, but you keep doing that, and you’re gonna bleed all over the sheets. You think Kyrie doesn’t have enough laundry to do already?” Rosso blinked at the topical sidestep, and his grip relaxed. Nero jerked his head toward the door. “Come on out in the kitchen with me. Let’s get you patched up.”

Rosso frowned, analyzing the suggestion for a trap, but after a few seconds he scooted out of his defensive position and followed Nero into the kitchen. Nero pointed him to a chair and opened the bottle of antiseptic. “You wanted to stay awake, right?”

“Yes.”

“Good, because this is gonna sting. Should wake you right up.” He swabbed the cuts liberally, holding the boy’s arm firmly in place as he tried to squirm away. “There, done. You wanna get decorated?” He shook the box of bandages.

Rosso scowled and pulled his arms back. “No. I don’t need those.”

“Yeah, knowing you, those little cuts will probably heal before dinner.” Nero stood and opened the refrigerator. “You want something to drink?”

The boy hesitated. “It’s not snack time.”

“I didn’t ask if you wanted a snack, did I?” Nero retrieved the bottle of milk and poured a glass, which he plopped down in front of Rosso. “Here. If you’re not going to rest, you at least need to get some protein in your system. Milk has a lot of that.” It also contained a bunch of natural compounds that Kyrie insisted helped people fall asleep. The kid was obviously exhausted, and if a dose of calcium would help knock him out, Nero wasn’t above trying it.

Rosso eyed the glass with suspicion. “It’s just milk, right?”

Nero rolled his eyes and splashed a finger of milk in another glass, which he drained in one gulp. “See? Just milk. What, you think I’m going to slip you sleeping pills or something?”

Placated, Rosso sipped from his glass. “I’m not going to sleep.”

Nero dropped into the chair opposite him. “Convince me.”

Rosso blinked. “What?”

“Tell me why you don’t want to sleep.” Nero crossed his arms and leaned back. “You convince me there’s a good reason, and I’ll let you stay up as late as you want. But you have to convince me.”

The boy turned his glass in the ring of condensation it was leaving on the table. “It isn’t safe anymore,” he murmured.

“Why isn’t it safe?”

His eyes flicked in the direction of the living room. “He _knows_.”

“Who knows what?” The boy didn’t answer, and Nero prompted him. “You mean Vergil?”

Rosso flinched at the name.

Nero sighed. “Look, Ro—Tony, I know it’s a lot to take in. I told you about the demon that took away your memories, remember? Well, that demon also changed you both. Made you younger. And we managed to undo that. So even though he isn’t the same age anymore, he’s still your brother.”

“He isn’t!”

“He is. I know you can feel him, just like you always could.”

Rosso’s head twisted from side to side. “But _no one_ here is supposed to know. If he were really my brother, he would never…” He broke off abruptly.

Nero blinked. “Never what?”

Rosso looked away and gulped his milk.

“Tony, listen.” Nero leaned forward. “I want to help you, I really do. But I can’t do that if you won’t trust me. I know you’re upset, I know you’re so scared of something you’d rather hurt yourself than sleep, but I don’t know _why_. Tell me what’s wrong so I can fix it.”

Rosso stared into his empty glass for nearly a minute. His eyes were glassy and red-rimmed, and he swayed slightly in his seat. At last he raised bloodshot eyes to Nero. “You know about… the other place.”

Nero nodded. “The place you dream about. Your real memories.”

Rosso gnawed at his lower lip. “If those are our real memories… did you know us there? In the other place?”

“Yeah, sort of. I met you a little later than what you’re remembering, though. That’s why you haven’t remembered me yet.”

Rosso’s gaze was piercing, and for an instant Nero was reminded of who this child really was—though he’d only seen such an intense look replace Dante’s charismatic smile a handful of times. “Then you know our names there.”

“Your names… in the other place?” It took Nero a second to catch on. “You mean your _real_ names. Dante and Vergil.”

Rosso flinched, but nodded. “It was always our secret. My brother’s and mine. No one else was supposed to know them. We had different names here. And then Mother…” His entire body tensed, shoulders rising to meet his ears. “Mother said I had to change my name, and start over as someone else. _No one_ could know my real name.”

“So you became Tony Redgrave.”

Rosso’s eyes flashed up to meet Nero’s, wary, and he hovered off the chair for a second as though he might bolt for the door. Nero showed his palms. “Relax. I knew you before you lost your memories, remember? It’s not a big deal that I know your full alias. Besides, by the time I met you, you’d stopped using it.”

Rosso sank back down on the chair. “What name did I use, then?”

“You’d gone back to your real name. Dante.”

Rosso glanced toward the door, clearly uncomfortable with Nero speaking his “secret” name aloud. “But I’m not supposed to. Nobody can know who I am.”

“Well, some day, that’s gonna change. And your brother—Vergil—he uses his real name, too. So if you’re worried because he called you by that name, it’s only because that’s what he _always_ calls you.” Nero propped his chin on one hand, trying to suggest subliminally that Rosso relax a bit, too. “So why do you think it’s dangerous to fall asleep?”

Rosso rubbed at one eye. “Because when I sleep, I go to the other place,” he murmured. “That’s where they’re looking for me. And he said my name, so it’s not a secret anymore. If I fall asleep now, they’ll find me.”

The logic was so contorted that Nero could barely follow it, but it was clearly a serious concern to the boy. “Tony, everything you see in the other place is just a memory. It all already happened, _years_ ago. Nothing that happens here, while you’re awake, can affect what happened back then.”

Rosso frowned, clearly unconvinced. “I still don’t want to sleep.”

Nero sighed. “Okay, have it your way. But there are two rules: First, you have to stay on your bunk, sleep or no sleep. Second…” He put a hand over the boy’s wrist, still dotted with a few red nail marks. “You _will not_ hurt yourself. If you really want to stay awake, you have to use your willpower to do it, not physical pain. I catch you doing something like this again, I really will pull out the sleeping pills. Got it?”

The boy nodded, his head wobbling a little from fatigue.

“All right. Back to your room.” Nero followed him to make sure he actually got in bed, and discovered that in the interim, the younger boys had awakened. Carlo and Kyle were both perched on Kyle’s bunk, apparently building a cross-country course for a toy truck out of the bed linens. At the far end of the room, Scipio was hanging over the side of his lower bunk to stack blocks on the floor.

Julio, who was attempting to read amid the noise and chaos surrounding him, met Nero’s eyes as he entered the room. _Everything okay?_ he mouthed.

Nero wandered over to Julio’s bunk and pretended to examine the book he was reading. “All good for now,” he murmured. “You see him pinching himself or anything again, come and get me.”

Julio nodded. “Roger that.”

Nero circled Rosso’s bunk and bent to watch him settle onto his bed. “Remember our deal. Willpower only, _capisce_?”

Rosso nodded. “Yup.”

“Okay.” Nero started to step back, but a yelp and a jab to the back of his thigh halted him in his tracks. “What the—”

“Careful!” Scipio admonished. Nero twisted and saw that his foot had nearly collided with the elaborate structure Scipio was building. “You almost hit my _Cattedrale_.”

“Oh, sorry.” Nero turned and watched as Scipio, bracing two teetering piles of blocks, nudged one of the triangular pieces into place between their uppermost tiers to serve as a keystone. He let go, and the blocks settled into a freestanding arch. “Wow.” Nero crouched for a closer look. “That’s seriously impressive, Scipio. Where did you learn to do that?”

The boy dug his chin into the edge of his mattress. “ _Pap_ _à_ taught me,” he mumbled. “ _È una chiave di volta_.”

Nero tried to recall what Gianna had said about her parents. Their father had been an architect or a building contractor or something in construction, hadn’t he? “You inherited some real talent, there.”

Scipio hesitated. “What is in… hair…?”

“Inherited? It means something you get from your parents. Like… your hair color, for instance. I’ll bet your mother or father had red hair.” Considering all three siblings were redheads, it was almost guaranteed. “You can inherit skills, too. Like being good at building things.”

Scipio considered this. “If I am good at the same things as _Pap_ _à_ , does that mean I will do the same work as him? Do all kids do the same as their fathers?”

Nero’s thoughts flashed unwillingly to Vergil, and he got to his feet. “Not all, no. Even if you have the same skills, you can choose to do different things with them.”

As he stood he caught sight of Rosso, who was following their conversation with a thoughtful expression. Dante had always been so much warmer and more real than the impersonal statues of Sparda Nero had grown up with that he’d found it difficult to connect them in his mind, but now the parallels struck home with sudden clarity. Like Sparda before him, Dante had dedicated his life to protecting humanity from demons. “But you know what?” Nero murmured. “Sometimes, kids do _exactly_ the same.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (...aaaand that oblique statement by Vergil is the only reference to Gilver that you'll be getting in this story. Now that we've acknowledged the elephant in the continuity, we can move on.)


	48. Chapter 48

Nero knew as soon as he stepped out of the boys’ bedroom and into the hallway that Nico had come in from the garage; the acrid reek of cigarette smoke was beginning to roll through the house. He fanned the air before his nose meaningfully as he entered the living room, though he refrained from making any comment when he sensed how the the atmosphere had chilled in his absence.

Vergil, lip curled in disgust, had his head turned away from Nico as though seeking unpolluted air. The eyes of the four women snapped to Nero as he joined them, clearly eager for something to break the awkward silence. “How is Tony?” Kyrie asked quickly.

“He was pretty worked up, but he’s also about to drop from exhaustion. I think he’ll be fine once he actually falls asleep. He’s convinced himself that something bad will happen if he does, so he’s fighting it. But he can’t stay awake forever, and when he wakes up tomorrow and the world hasn’t ended, I think things will go back to normal.” Nero reached for the teapot and refilled his cup, mostly to have something to do with his hands. The tense environment was beginning to agitate him. “So, now that we’re all here, let’s talk Nilepoch. Trish, you said you had something?”

“Nothing conclusive,” she replied. “I did some reconnaissance while we were out camping, to see if I could get a sense of where it had gone. Once, I felt a flicker of _something_ , just at the edge of my perception, but it vanished almost immediately.”

“It was the Nilepoch?”

“I can’t be certain, but it was definitely not human.”

“There are lots of stray demons wandering loose on the island,” Lady put in. “Are you sure it wasn’t just one of those?”

Trish shook her head. “It wasn’t something weak like a Chimera. It was more of a… a surge, or…” Her brow furrowed. “You know, in a song, when the music suddenly builds up and grows louder. There’s a word for that, isn’t there?”

“ _Crescendo_ ,” Vergil supplied grudgingly.

“It was sort of like that—I suddenly felt a strong, rising presence for just a few seconds, and then it faded away to nothing.”

“Huh. I wonder if that could have been it activating its powers, or something. I didn’t feel anything like that in the warehouse, but I was kind of distracted at the time.” Nero leaned back against the sofa cushions. “Where was this? Near where you camped?”

“No, I went farther inland. It was not far from the castle, maybe halfway up the mountainside. I searched the area, but I couldn’t find any trace of a demon near there. Not even footprints in the soil.”

“It could have been underground,” Kyrie suggested. “That area is honeycombed with old mine tunnels.”

“Yeah. Agnus had plenty of labs and testing facilities down there, too,” Nero added.

“He sure did,” Nico agreed. “Not just the main labs, like the one where we set up th’ ambush, but a whole network of tunnels out into the surroundin’ hills. Me an’ Nero cleared out a bunch of ‘em when we was trackin’ down the rest o’ Daddy’s research.”

“Which means it could have been the Nilepoch Trish sensed, or it could conceivably be one of the Order’s pet monsters.” Lady sighed. “Not a very cheerful thought, but the Order was known to meddle with things they should have left well alone.”

“You don’t think there could still be something alive down there, do you?” Kyrie looked alarmed. “It’s been six years. Wouldn’t it have died by now?”

“Six years in the lifespan of a demon scarcely bears mentioning,” Vergil said. “Powerful devils can live for thousands of years. Even the weakest ones can survive for months without feeding.”

“And considering the kind of crap the Order was doing with them, fusing them to armor and making weapons and things, they might not even _need_ to feed.” Nero glanced down at his right arm, which tingled with the memory of an incident he’d nearly forgotten. “Last time Nico and I went exploring down there was about a year and a half ago, and I was still picking up some pretty weird vibes. I always meant to go back and check it out, but…” His fingers curled into a fist, and he glanced around at the others. “It sounds like we might want to take a look down there, anyway. If the Order did leave any kind of demon behind, the Nilepoch might be attracted to its power. Might actually give us a shot at finding the damn thing.”

Lady frowned. “How wide an area are we talking about searching? If there’s a chance of meeting the Nilepoch on its way to dinner, I don’t think any of us should be out on our own.”

“We spent _weeks_ explorin’ down there,” Nico said. “Hell, I don’t even think we went into some o’ those tunnels, there were so dang many.”

“But we were searching for records then,” Nero added. “We don’t have to do a full forensic sweep of the place this time, just a quick walk-through. If there’s anything down there big enough to attract the Nilepoch, one of us should be able to sense it.” Vergil and Trish would, at least. “Shouldn’t take us more than a couple of days. Three, tops. If we split up, we could probably cover most of the area in one afternoon.”

“No, I think Lady has a point,” Trish said. “We should stick together, in case the Nilepoch decides to drop in unannounced. Our odds are better that way.”

Nico raised both hands. “Uh, if it’s all the same t’ you, I’ll just stay in the van while y’all’re explorin’. Considerin’ the three o’ you together barely even scratched this sucker last time, I don’t fancy gettin’ anywhere _near_ the damn thing.”

“Fair enough.” It wasn’t as though Nico would be of any use trying to locate a demonic presence, anyway. Nero glanced around at the group. “So is that the plan? We head out tomorrow and start searching the complex for any demon big enough to show up on Trish’s radar?”

“I’d rather do at least a rough survey first, for efficiency. I mean, there’s no point searching tunnels on the far east side of the island if all signs indicate that what we’re looking for is on the west side.” Lady glanced at Trish. “Do you think you could find that place you sensed the demon again?”

Trish nodded. “I think so. The general area, if not the exact spot.”

“Good. How about tomorrow, Trish and I take a look at the geography, so we at least know where to start? Nico can drive us.”

Nero thought that mostly sounded like an excuse for Lady to get away from Vergil for a day, but it did make some sense to narrow their search to a smaller area. “Fine by me. And then we go hunting on Tuesday?”

“Well…” Kyrie’s hands were clasped tightly in her lap. “I know you’re all anxious to find the Nilepoch, but… what about the threats closer to home?”

Nero mentally sorted through the catalogue of recent incidents. “You mean Gigi’s mentor?”

Kyrie nodded. “In addition to all the demons he’s summoned around town, there have been multiple attacks on the orphanage, as well as at least one targeting you directly. If you’re all likely to be gone for several days…” She cast a silent plea for support toward Lady. “I know it would delay your plans a day or two, but I’d really feel more comfortable having some way to defend the house while you’re gone.”

Nico scratched her head. “Defend? You mean, like, traps or somethin’?”

“Kyrie wants to learn to shoot,” Nero explained, keeping his tone as neutral as possible. He still didn’t like the idea, but he didn’t want to sound disparaging, either.

Nico’s jaw dropped. “Shoot? You mean, like, _guns_? Our sweet lil’ Kyrie?” She clutched at her heart and blinked rapidly. “I never thought I’d see the day…”

Nero rolled his eyes, but Lady jumped in before he could snap back at Nico. “Here’s an idea. If Trish and I are going to be gone for part of the day anyway, why don’t you talk to the orphanage tomorrow and see if any of the sisters are game to learn? Then we can take the van out to the old mining camp on Tuesday and give anyone who’s interested a crash course. Those mine tailings will make a good backstop, and there’s enough old lumber and equipment to use as a bench. We can cover basic safety and handling in a day, and still have time to get in some practice shooting. It won’t be comprehensive training, but at least you’d all be a little more prepared in case of emergency. We can start the tunnel-sweep on Wednesday. I don’t think a day one way or the other is going to make that much of a difference, considering we don’t know if the Nilepoch is even here right now, or already on its way to the future.”

“That sounds perfect!” Kyrie hesitated. “But what about the children? I’m not sure it’s a good idea to take Tony along, and the others are home from school by mid-afternoon on weekdays.”

“I’ll stay home with them,” Nero offered.

Kyrie looked over in surprise. “Are you sure? I thought you’d want to, well, supervise.”

“Lady knows what she’s doing. She’s probably a better teacher than me, anyway.” Nero knew he was not the most patient of instructors, and given his reservations about the whole situation, he didn’t want to create any friction between himself and Kyrie. “Besides, the only gun I have is Blue Rose, and she’s not exactly novice-friendly. Nico and Lady can match you up with something more your size.”

“Don’t leave me out.” Trish arched her back and drew Luce from somewhere behind her hips. She twirled the pistol once by the trigger guard, then tucked it out of sight again. Nero had never been able to figure out exactly where she carried her weapons, and could only assume that she was using some kind of devil ability to conceal them on her person. “It’s been a while since I’ve had a proper ladies’ day out, and if it involves gunplay, I’m _definitely_ in.”

“Good,” Nero said. “You can keep your feelers out for the Nilepoch in that area, too. I don’t think anyone should be out there without someone who can sense it coming.”

“It sounds like we’re all agreed, then.” Lady glanced around the group for confirmation. “Congratulations, everyone, we actually have a plan for this week!”

Nero chuckled. “Don’t get used to it.”

“Speaking of plans…” Kyrie got to her feet. “If we’re going to have anything to eat for dinner tonight, I’d better see how much food we have left in the pantry. The market closes early on Sundays, so I don’t have much time if I need to pick up anything.”

“You’ll need more marshmallows,” Trish said. “There were only four left in the bag, last I saw.”

“Oh, dear. I bought the last bag on Friday, and I doubt the store has restocked since then.” Kyrie frowned. “But there isn’t much I can do with just four marshmallows. I hope they don’t go stale before I can find more.”

Trish looked hopeful. “I can make it zero, if that would solve your problem.”

Kyrie laughed. “It would, at that.”

They went into the kitchen, and Nico leaned over to look out the window. “Looks like the rain’s let up some. I think I’ll run back to my place, since I got to carry my bags an’ everythin’.” She turned toward the garage, already fishing in her pocket for another cigarette.

Nero was already wondering how he was going to keep Vergil and Lady from renewing their spat from earlier, but the moment Nico had departed, Vergil rose from his chair. “Lady, if you are amenable, I should like to borrow some money.”

Lady recovered quickly from her surprise, though her eyebrows remained arched. “What do you need money for?”

Vergil’s eyes narrowed. “I am certainly capable of acquiring the items I need without local currency, but I assume you all would prefer I pay for them.”

“Yes, we do tend to frown on robbery and murder. More to the point, why should _I_ lend you money?”

Vergil returned her cool gaze. “Because unlike Dante, I’m good for it.”

Lady gave him an appraising look, then fished in a pocket and peeled a few bills from a folded stack. “I’ll expect this returned with interest.”

“I assumed as much.” Vergil pocketed the money and angled his head slightly in Nero’s direction. “I shall return before supper.”

Nero watched Vergil exit the house, then looked at Lady, still trying to process the improbable exchange he’d just witnessed. “What the hell was that? You two were seconds away from killing each other a couple hours ago, and now you’re giving him money?”

She flashed a rueful smile. “I don’t have to like him to do business with him.”

“You trust him to pay you back?”

“Oddly enough, I do.” Lady settled back on the sofa. “Despite all the horrible things he’s done and the fact that he’s an awful person in almost every way that matters, Vergil has always had this rigid code of honor. I mean, he may try to kill you, but at least he’s honest about it; he’ll never sneak around and stab you in the back. If he says he’s good for the money, he is. I’ve never known him to lie.”

Nero considered this. “I don’t know about that. V deceived everyone, didn’t he?”

“I’m not sure if V ever actually _lied_ , though. He mostly just quoted poetry at people until they stopped asking questions.” Lady shrugged. “Either way, it’s a pretty safe bet: Either he’ll pay me back because it’s the noble thing and he feels obligated, or he’ll pay me back because it’s an easy way to one-up Dante, who still owes me the value of both his kidneys and then some.”

“Huh.” Nero was silent for a moment. “So if he doesn’t lie, then what he said at lunch…”

Lady’s expression turned stony. “He can still be _wrong_. It doesn’t necessarily mean he’s lying.”

* * *

Vergil returned shortly before dinner, carrying a rain-spattered bag in one hand and the battered combat boots Nero had lent him in the other. In his time out of the house he had acquired a dark canvas overcoat and a pair of leather field boots—Order-issue, judging by the distinctive buckles up the calf. A whisper of memory summoned the scent of boot polish as Nero recalled Credo buffing his own officer’s boots to a mirror finish…

Trish, who had returned to lounge on the sofa with a magazine after eliminating the remaining marshmallows, gave Vergil’s expanded wardrobe an appraising glance. “You went shopping? If you were cold, I’m sure Nero could have lent you a blanket.”

Vergil ignored the undisguised amusement in her voice. “If I am to fight an enemy such as the Nilepoch, I intend to do so properly equipped.”

“Equipped?” Trish ran a hand along the edge of her leather jacket, exposing the span of bare skin between her bustier and low-slung pants. “Do you mean if you wear _more_ clothes, the demons die faster?” She turned to Lady, who was following the volley with the look of a predator waiting to spring. “Imagine what we could do if we put on more layers! I didn’t realize we’d been doing it wrong all this time.”

“It’s as valid an excuse as any for your inability to defeat the Nilepoch,” Vergil returned.

Lady’s eyes narrowed. “At least _we_ didn’t wind up in diapers.”

“ _Children_ ,” Nero snapped. “Do I need to put someone in time-out?”

Vergil huffed through his nose and turned to hang his new coat in the hall closet. Nero stood and collected the combat boots he’d set aside. “Dinner’s almost ready, so—” He caught himself just short of reminding Vergil to wash up, as he had frequently prompted Zaffiro. “—you can stash your stuff wherever. We’ll eat in a few minutes.”

Before the others could renew their caustic exchange, Nero hurried upstairs and tossed the shoes into the closet, then dropped back onto his bed with a sigh. He’d thought managing seven children had been difficult, but now that he had a living room full of adults in a perpetual state of microaggression—and sometimes macroaggression—he longed for the relative simplicity of sorting out whose turn it was to put away the toys or who got to play with the blocks. At least the kids recognized his authority and listened to him most of the time.

Nero was keenly aware that as the ranks of their devil hunting outfit went, he was the youngest and by far the least experienced. Lady and Vergil accorded him a certain level of courtesy since they were staying in his home, but he knew better than to read anything more into their cooperation. Nero might be their host, but he wasn’t their leader. The only person _all_ of them were willing to take direction from was Dante—and even that was hit-or-miss where Vergil was concerned.

He heard Kyrie calling from downstairs, and summoned his courage to face what would likely be the family dinner from hell.

* * *

One of the many things Nero loved about Kyrie was her ability to assess a situation with a moment’s glance and formulate a solution in nanoseconds. She took one look at Nero’s face when he entered the kitchen, handed him the ladle she was using to dish up food for the children, and scooped up the tray with the adults’ larger portions. “Why don’t you eat with the children tonight?” she said brightly. “I’m sure you’ve missed them while we were gone all weekend. I’ll go sit with the other grown-ups.”

Nero shot her a look of pure gratitude, and she gave him a knowing smile as she carried the tray of plates out to the living room. For all her gracious smiles and angelic mien, Kyrie could take control of a conversation faster than anyone Nero knew, and people had a natural inclination to behave well around her. She’d keep the front room civil, at least for the duration of the meal.

And for his part, Nero was just as happy to spend an hour with the kids and hear all about their weekend away. Carlo and Kyle regaled him with tales of the insects they’d collected in a jar; Scipio described the tower of rocks he’d built; Flavia had climbed so high in a tree that Julio had needed to scramble up after her to help her down. All of them waxed eloquent about marshmallows toasted over the campfire.

Only Rosso, seated beside Nero, remained quiet throughout the meal. He looked worse than he had during their earlier talk, eyes bloodshot and hung with shadows, body swaying faintly in his seat. Clearly his willpower had been strong enough to keep him awake through the afternoon, though from his slack face and glassy stare it seemed he’d reached his limit. “Hey,” Nero prompted, nudging the boy’s elbow, “you can’t skip sleep _and_ food. Why don’t you try to eat a little more?”

Rosso jabbed a piece of broccoli with his fork and put it in his mouth. Nero knew the action was purely automatic; Rosso had never been fond of green vegetables, and typically ate around them as much as possible. Now he chewed mechanically, as though the taste didn’t even register.

The other children cleaned their plates long before Rosso had even put a dent in his food, and they fidgeted as they eyed the slow eater. Kyrie always insisted that they eat as a family, which meant waiting until everyone was finished before being excused from the table. Nero saw their frustration and took pity on them. “Since Tony’s not feeling well, I’ll stay with him while he eats,” he said. “The rest of you can go. Just put your plates in the sink first, okay?”

Julio stood, then glanced uncertainly at Nero. “Can we go into the living room, or should we not because of Mister Vergil?”

“Let’s keep giving him space for now.” Nero knew how much tension there had been in the living room earlier in the day; adding a pack of children to the mix wouldn’t improve the situation, even with Kyrie running interference. “You guys can play in your room, or do your homework in here if you need a table, but we’ll leave the living room to the grown-ups this evening.”

There was a scramble at the sink as the children tried to reach around one another to dispose of their dishes. Nero waited until the kitchen had emptied before turning back to Rosso. “So. Still don’t want to sleep, huh?”

“I tried,” the boy murmured.

“And?” Nero prompted. “Did anything bad happen?”

“Not _bad_ , but…” Rosso idly twirled a noodle around his fork tines. “I didn’t like it, so I woke up.”

Nero wasn’t sure what he meant. “What, did you have a bad dream or something?”

Rosso shook his head. “I just don’t like sleeping by myself.”

“By yourself? You guys are packed into that room like sardines. You couldn’t be alone if you wanted to.”

“I don’t mean _them_.” Rosso scowled. “I can’t feel them.”

“Ah.” Nero leaned back in his chair. “You mean like your brother. Or Trish.”

Rosso set down his fork and slumped back in his chair. “Or you,” he muttered, so quietly Nero scarcely heard it.

Nero caught his breath. Dante had once told him he could sense him, but since neither Rosso nor Zaffiro had ever mentioned it, he’d assumed that their abilities were less acute as children. The fact that he showed up on their radar went a long way toward explaining why Rosso had trusted him that afternoon, even after the scene with Vergil. Perhaps Nero, like Trish, provided a welcome sense of familiarity to a boy desperately missing his other half.

But Nero couldn’t very well sit beside Rosso’s bed overnight, and installing Trish in the boys’ bedroom would only ensure that none of the _other_ boys slept. And he didn’t dare let Rosso sit on the roof of the house with Trish. “Well, look, we’re all just a room away, right? I know it’s not the same as one of us being right next to you, but you can still feel us from there, right?”

“Kind of.” Rosso’s eyes shifted to Nero, then back to his plate. “I can feel them more than you.”

Nero sighed. Apparently that meant his unique radar blip was only running at half power, or something. “I know you don’t like it, but you have _got_ to get some sleep, kiddo. You’re gonna make yourself sick if you don’t. And if I know you, you’ll hate that even more than sleeping by yourself.” Nero tapped the edge of the boy’s plate. “Get a few more bites of dinner into you. I bet you’ll sleep better on a full stomach.”

Rosso picked up his fork and prodded halfheartedly at a carrot. His eyes were beginning to glaze again, and he didn’t even look up as Julio entered the room with a stack of books and papers in his arms. The older boy hesitated, glancing from Nero to Rosso. “Is it okay if I work in here?”

“Yeah, join the party. You have homework?”

Julio deposited his books on the table and sank into the chair beside Rosso. “Algebra. I tried doing it in the van, but I didn’t understand part of it, and Kyrie was too busy with the other kids to go over it with me.” His gaze slid hopefully to Nero. “Can you help me?”

Nero let out a weak laugh. “Uh, I’ll give it my best shot, but it’s been a few years since I had to do anything more advanced than balancing the grocery budget. What are you learning?”

“Equations,” Julio groaned. “We’re supposed to solve for the variable, but I keep getting mixed up on how to do the part with the fractions.” He opened the textbook to the relevant chapter, then pushed the homework paper toward Nero. “I’m stuck on the third one.”

As Nero skimmed the instructions, trying to recall the order of operations, Rosso glanced at the paper beside his plate. “Sixteen,” he mumbled.

Nero blinked at him. “What?”

“It’s sixteen.” Rosso yawned. “You’re supposed to figure out what number the X stands for, right?”

“Yeah, but…” Nero grabbed a pencil and quickly worked through the problem. “Holy—it _is_ sixteen. How did you know that?”

Rosso yawned again, then rubbed at his watering eyes. “It’s just a number puzzle. ‘S’not that hard.” He poked at his food again. “Do I have to finish eating before I can go to bed?”

Nero hesitated, torn between making sure he ate enough and encouraging him to sleep now that he seemed willing. “Three more bites, and then you can brush your teeth and get in bed.”

Rosso dutifully swallowed a few morsels, and Nero excused him from the table. Julio watched him go, his expression a mixture of awe and jealousy. “Your uncle’s actually, like, in his forties, right?” he muttered when Rosso had vanished down the hall.

Nero glanced up from the textbook. “Technically, yeah. Why?”

“So I shouldn’t be feeling completely humiliated that a kid two years younger than me, who hasn’t slept in three days, can instantly solve an algebra problem I worked on for an hour and couldn’t figure out, just by glancing at it for two seconds?”

Nero laughed. “Yeah, I had the same feeling when Zaffiro started translating Latin a few weeks ago. They’re kind of on their own special scale. Don’t take it personally.”

“ _Latin_?” Julio whistled. “And I thought he was ambitious for reading Jules Verne.”

Nero glanced in the direction Rosso had gone. “I have to admit, I never knew he was _that_ good with numbers, though. I mean, I already knew Vergil was into books, but I guess I hadn’t thought about what subjects Dante would have been good at.”

“Well, what he said makes sense, I guess.” Julio tapped his pencil beside the equation. “If you think about it, it’s really just a kind of puzzle. And Tony’s _always_ solving puzzles.”

“Yeah. I guess he’s a lot smarter than I’ve been giving him credit for. Of course, that could be because he never seems to apply those skills to things like _his_ budget. Guy’s been strapped for cash for as long as I’ve known him.”

Julio shrugged. “Being poor doesn’t mean you’re bad at math. Sometimes you just don’t have money.”

“Ain’t that the absolute truth.” Nero thought of all the careful budgeting he and Kyrie had been doing for the past couple of years just to keep food on the table. Being short on money had made Nero far more concerned with his arithmetic skills than he’d ever been in school.

He leaned forward to look at the next equation on Julio’s homework paper. “Okay, so if we think of this whole thing as a puzzle, maybe that will make it more fun to solve. What do you think?”

* * *

After half an hour’s tutoring, Julio felt confident enough to tackle the rest of the equations on his own. Nero washed the children’s dishes, then ventured into the living room to collect the rest of the plates. He was surprised to find Kyrie sitting there alone, paging through one of the magazines Trish had brought. “Where is everyone?”

“Nico went home, Lady is in the garage doing something with her equipment, Trish had an urgent date with a pizza, and Vergil went out. He didn’t say where he was going.” Kyrie dropped the magazine and massaged her forehead. “And I deserve an extra-special dessert for keeping the peace long enough for everyone to eat before they scattered to the hills.”

“You deserve a _medal_ for managing that group.” Nero leaned over the back of the couch and kissed the top of her head. “I’m doing the dishes. Are you done with those?”

Kyrie handed him the tray of plates and flatware. “Thank you. What are the children up to?”

“Julio and I have been exploring the exciting world of algebra in the kitchen. The rest are in their rooms.”

She nodded and stood. “I’ll start cycling them through the bathroom, then. It’s nearly bedtime.”

Nero returned to the kitchen with the dishes. He was just setting the last cup in the drainer when Kyrie joined him. She paused by the table. “Julio, are you nearly finished? It’s almost time for lights out.”

Julio smothered a yawn and nodded. “I’m on the last problem.”

“As soon as you’re done, go get ready for bed, all right?” Kyrie collected a towel and began wiping down the dishes Nero had washed. She waited until Julio had packed up his books and headed for the bedroom before turning to Nero. “Have you seen Tony? He looks awful.”

“I saw him at dinner. He was so tired, I thought he was going to fall asleep right in his noodles.”

“Evidently not,” Kyrie sighed. “He’s still awake.”

“ _Still?_ I thought he’d given up on the whole staying-awake-forever thing. He even told me he wanted to sleep!”

“Well, regardless of what he told you, his eyes were open when I tucked the boys in a few minutes ago. I think being separated from his brother has really affected him. That’s one factor we didn’t consider when we decided on this plan.”

“Why would we?” Nero rubbed the back of his neck, which ached from looking down at the sink for so long. “Most kids don’t have weird psychic connections to their siblings. And he’s not like this as an adult, either. It never even occurred to me that it could be a problem.”

“We’ll have to think of a solution. He can’t go on like he is.” Kyrie assumed a thoughtful expression as she stacked the plates in the cupboard. “When Zaffiro wasn’t sleeping because of his nightmares, being near his brother helped calm him down, didn’t it?”

“It helped a little, yeah. But I’m not sure that’s a fix for tonight. I mean, Vergil’s not even here right—” Nero broke off, staring at the wall. “Oh. Of course.”

“Of course what?”

“Vergil and Trish are both gone. He told me he didn’t like sleeping where he couldn’t feel anyone nearby. If they’re out of the house, then his two best security blankets are out of range.”

“I see. But we can’t ask them to return, since we don’t even know where they’ve gone.”

“Right.” Nero pushed a hand through his hair. “I guess I could go sit with him for a few minutes, but I don’t want to stay there all night. I wonder if—” He broke off when he heard the front door open, and hurried to the front room to see who it was. “Vergil! Good, we were hoping you’d get back soon. Where have you been?”

“Out,” Vergil said crisply. He slipped out of his new coat and hung the garment in the closet.

“Well I didn’t think you were hiding under the couch,” Nero retorted. “Something pressing demanding your attention at nine o’clock on a Sunday?”

Vergil gave Nero a look that in any other location would have been a threat of impending violence. “Are Lady and Trish also required to give minute-by-minute accounts of their whereabouts when they leave the house, or have I been singled out for special attention?”

Nero was about to snap back that Lady and Trish didn’t have a history of wiping out entire cities, but Kyrie’s hand closed on his arm in a firm warning. “Of course not,” she said quickly. “We’re heading upstairs soon, and I wanted to make sure you had everything you needed before we went to bed. Can I get you anything? Do you have enough pillows and blankets?”

Vergil’s eyes flicked to the neat pile of folded bedding at one end of the couch. “This is sufficient.”

“All right. If you think of anything you need, don’t hesitate to ask.” Still attempting to counter the hostility lingering in the air between Vergil and Nero, Kyrie favored him with her warmest smile, then stoked it further by looking a touch contrite. “I’m sorry we can’t offer you a proper guest room.”

Vergil, it seemed, was immune to her charms—or maybe just to human warmth, Nero thought. “It’s not necessary. I require very little sleep.”

Kyrie exchanged a glance with Nero. “Actually, speaking of very little sleep… I was hoping to have a word with you about Tony.”

Vergil sat on the couch and began unbuckling his boots. “You may speak.”

Kyrie blinked at the curtness of his tone, but wasn’t cowed by it. “You see, he hasn’t slept properly since last Thursday night…”

As Kyrie began to explain the situation, Nero’s ears caught a faint rustle from the hallway behind them. He glanced back, then touched Kyrie’s shoulder. “Hey.”

Kyrie followed his gaze and gave a soft gasp as she saw Rosso swaying in the doorway, clutching his pillow like a shield against his chest. “Tony! What are you doing out of bed?”

The boy didn’t answer. His bloodshot eyes were fixed on Vergil. Nero turned to find Vergil answering the stare with that same maddeningly impassive gaze he always used.

“Tony?” Kyrie tried again. She bent and brushed the boy’s hair back from his eyes. “You still can’t sleep?”

This time he shook his head, though his eyes remained locked on Vergil. As Nero watched, the initial wariness began to leave his face, replaced with something like desperation. Coupled with his waxy skin and the bruise-colored shadows beneath his eyes, it made him look even more pitiful. His arms tightened around his pillow.

The sound of a resigned sigh drew Nero’s attention back to the couch. Vergil’s gaze had settled elsewhere, but he extended an arm out to one side at shoulder height. Nero wasn’t sure why until Rosso bolted forward and dove beneath it, landing pillow-first in Vergil’s lap.

“Tony!” Kyrie gasped, reaching for him, but halted after a single step. In a matter of seconds, the boy had burrowed into the cushions beside his brother and closed his eyes, the picture of relaxation. Vergil, bearing this indignity with typical stoicism, merely draped his outstretched arm along the back of the couch. “Er… I suppose that’s one solution,” Kyrie murmured, then seemed to remember her guest. “But you needn’t feel obligated to let him stay!” she added hastily. “We can move him back to his own bed if he’s bothering you. I’m sure he doesn’t mean to inconvenience you; he’s just so impulsive…”

Vergil had said nothing, and Nero put a hand on Kyrie’s shoulder. “I’m sure Vergil is fully aware of what his brother is like.”

“Right.” Kyrie gave a weak laugh. “Of course.”

She was clearly flustered by the whole situation, and Nero offered her a graceful exit. “Hey, I forgot, I left your overnight bag on the bed, and you haven’t had a chance to unpack yet. Why don’t you go on upstairs? I’ll finish up down here and join you in a minute.” He waited until Kyrie had said good night and excused herself before turning to Vergil. “If you get tired of playing brother’s keeper, you can move him somewhere else. Just… try to stay within range. He should sleep okay as long as you’re nearby.” Vergil gave him a flat look, and Nero shrugged. “Yeah, not telling you anything you don’t already know. See you in the morning.”

He locked the front door, put away the last few dishes, and switched out the lights in the kitchen and hallway. Before starting up the stairs, Nero passed by the living room again, unable to resist taking one final peek at the unlikely duo on the couch.

Their positions had shifted slightly since he’d left them. Vergil had settled into the corner of the couch, cheek tipped against one hand, elbow propped on the sofa arm. Rosso was already deep in sleep, his head pillowed on Vergil’s thigh. Vergil’s other arm no longer lay across the back of the cushions; instead, it was folded over the child in his lap, fingers resting on the loose white hair.

Vergil did not seem to notice Nero observing them; his gaze was fixed on his brother. But while the face of anyone else thus arranged might wear a look of affection or tenderness, Vergil’s expression remained inscrutable.


	49. Chapter 49

Sister Benedicta stared at them across the desk, her eyes wider than Nero had ever seen them. “You want to teach the sisters _what_?”

Nero had known when they left the house this morning that their errand at the orphanage was a doomed one. While Sister Benedicta bore a certain respect for swords because of their association with Sparda and the Order, she had never made any secret of her distaste for firearms. It had taken years for her to stop tutting at Nero whenever she saw him with Blue Rose, even when he’d been a member of the Knights. Now he found himself taking the brunt of her incensed glare, as though she suspected he was behind this nefarious plan to put pistols in the hands of her gentle childcare workers.

Nero deferred to Kyrie with his eyes. This whole thing had been her idea, after all; let her sell the headmistress on it.

“Only for self-defense,” Kyrie said hastily. “There have been several attacks on the orphanage recently, and since Nero is going to be busy hunting down a very dangerous demon for the foreseeable future, I think it’s best if we have our own line of defense. If Nero is away from the city when the next attack comes, we’ll need some way to protect the children. We can’t just shelter here indefinitely, and if the demons spread out into the surrounding neighborhood, even more lives will be at risk.”

The headmistress nodded. “That has been weighing on my mind, as well. But first, what about this dangerous demon?” She turned to Nero. “Are we in danger here? Should we take precautions against it?”

Nero shook his head. “It was last sighted out near the old mines, so I don’t think there’s an immediate risk. But we know it’s come into the city at least twice, so don’t leave the gates standing open.”

“I never do, these days.” Sister Benedicta sighed, and Nero could see from the deep furrows between her brows that she was at least _considering_ Kyrie’s proposal—which, frankly, was more than he’d expected. “I don’t like the idea of having armaments on the orphanage grounds, and I _certainly_ don’t want them where the children can see them. They are a dangerous temptation for those inclined to mischief, and their very presence could be frightening for some of the children. But without the Holy Knights to protect us these past few years…” She fell silent for a moment, then raised her eyes to Nero again. “You are all that has stood between us and disaster more times than I can count. Perhaps it is time we took some action to fill that gap ourselves.” She stood. “I know some of the sisters would be very uncomfortable in the presence of weapons—as I myself would be—so I won’t _ask_ anyone to participate in your firearms training. But if there is any personal interest among the staff, I will… permit them to attend.”

“Thank you, sister.” Kyrie followed the headmistress toward the staff room, and Nero trailed after them. It surprised him that she hadn’t vetoed the suggestion outright, but he was pleased to see Sister Benedicta taking a more realistic view of protecting the children in her charge.

Once the staff had been summoned to the room, Sister Benedicta allowed Kyrie to make her pitch. Ultimately, only two of the orphanage staff volunteered for the firearms training: Sister Veritas, a strong-minded woman around Lady’s age, and Sister Dominica, the most senior member of the staff, who was mostly deaf and couldn’t have been a day under eighty. Given the age spread, and his own memories of being disciplined by both women, Nero was suddenly _very_ glad that he’d volunteered to stay home with the kids.

“May the Savior guide,” Sister Benedicta intoned quietly when the staff had been dismissed. Most of them filed out of the room to other duties, though Sister Gratia hung back, waiting to speak with the headmistress. “And may He protect us in your absence. You’ll keep them all safe, I trust.” She was looking at Nero.

“Uh, I’m not involved, actually,” Nero said. “Lady’s the one who’ll be doing the teaching. But she knows her stuff. She’s been doing this longer than I’ve been alive, so they’ll be in good hands.”

“Lady.” The headmistress’s lips compressed. “The one who was here before?”

Nero knew she was thinking of Lady’s revealing wardrobe, and was glad that she had never caught sight of Trish. Sister Benedicta had been one of the most vocal critics of Gloria’s involvement in the Order. “Yeah. She’s a better instructor than I am. Civilian background, you know.” He tried to think of something that would convince her. “The Knights kinda had only one way of teaching things, and I’m pretty sure nobody wants me running them through practice drills all day.”

The headmistress didn’t look reassured. “Given the recent attacks, I’m more concerned about demons finding them, if you’re not with them. Where will this training take place?”

“Lady’s scoped out a good place near the mining camp. She’s out there right now, checking the area, in fact.”

“Near the mines.” Sister Benedicta frowned. “Isn’t that where you said that dangerous demon had been sighted?”

“That was a week ago,” he said quickly. “There’s no evidence it’s still there. Besides, my partner, Nico, will be there too, along with another hunter we know. Plenty of experts to handle anything that shows up. And if there’s any trouble at all, everyone can just hop in the van and leave. You know I wouldn’t be sending Kyrie anywhere I thought was really dangerous.”

The headmistress still looked doubtful, but Kyrie came to Nero’s rescue. “I’m sure we will be fine. We’re taking precautions, and I trust Lady and Trish to look after our safety. But will you be all right here, with two staff members gone for a day? I’m sure Nero could stop by for a while if you find yourself short-handed.”

“No, we’ll manage all right. I can have that girl Gianna help monitor the after-school activities if necessary.”

“Hey, that’s right.” Nero seized the opportunity to divert the conversation further. “How’s she doing? We’ve had so much going on I forgot to ask.”

Sister Benedicta’s expression grew marginally less grave. “The doctor looked at her hands on Friday, and his prognosis was favorable. And she’s beginning to adjust to being here. She didn’t want to come out of her room at all at first, but she seems more willing to help now that she knows her brother and sister aren’t in the building. I think she was worried they would see her and be upset.”

“But Scipio and Flavia come to the after-school activities, too,” Kyrie pointed out. “If Gianna is helping tomorrow, they’ll see her.”

“Oh, that’s true.” The headmistress frowned. “I’ll speak with her this afternoon and ask if she’s ready to meet them.”

Kyrie shook her head. “I’m not sure _they_ _’re_ ready to meet _her_. I think Flavia misses her, but Scipio still harbors a lot of anger toward her for leaving them here.”

Sister Benedicta nodded. “I believe she feels rather guilty about the whole situation. I do hope they’ll all come to understand one another, in time. But all things considered, Gianna is doing as well as can be expected. I think she’s benefiting from having some structure in her life.” She clasped her hands and sighed. “She seems to be a good girl at heart, though sadly misguided. It’s unfortunate when vulnerable children fall under bad influences.”

“Yeah, well, her ‘influence’ seems like a real piece of work,” Nero muttered. “We’re still trying to track him down. He’s got a lot to answer for.”

“If possible, I’d like to keep Gianna out of it,” Sister Benedicta said firmly. “The less contact she has with her old life, the better. Although, on that subject, she has expressed a great deal of concern about finding her motor scooter… Do you know anything about that?”

Nero scratched his head. “I know where we left it a few weeks ago. No idea if it’s still there.”

“Well, if you have opportunity to look, I think she’d appreciate knowing it’s safe. I have the impression that it’s the only property she owns, and she’s quite worried about losing it.”

“I’ll try to run over tonight and check. If it hasn’t been stripped for parts, I can probably drop it off this evening.”

“Here?” Sister Benedicta’s eyebrows arched. “What are we to do with it?”

Nero shrugged. “Store it until you figure out where Gigi’s going, I guess. I’ve got the van and Lady’s motorcycle in my garage, so there really isn’t room for it at my place.”

“There’s the tool shed,” Sister Gratia interjected. Nero turned; he’d forgotten she was still in the room. “The only things we store there are the garden supplies. With a little rearranging, I’m sure we could fit something small like a scooter. And the shed locks, so it wouldn’t be stolen.”

“That’s an excellent suggestion, Sister Gratia.” Sister Benedicta’s eyes fell on the packet in Sister Gratia’s hand and widened. “Oh! Is that…?”

Sister Gratia beamed and stepped closer. “He made another donation,” she stage-whispered. “He stopped by while I was sweeping the pavement in front of the gate.” She handed over the envelope, looking immensely pleased with herself.

“Praise the Savior,” the headmistress breathed, tucking the packet away into her robes. “We truly need this.”

Kyrie glanced between the two women. “What’s this?”

“It seems our mysterious benefactor continues to provide,” Sister Benedicta explained. “I mentioned it to Nero the last time he was here. For the past few weeks, a gentleman has been bringing Sister Gratia cash donations for the orphanage. A modest amount, but sorely needed. Apparently he learned we were struggling without the Order’s financial support, and felt inspired to aid the children.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” Kyrie sighed. “Ever since I balanced the books I’ve been worried about our funding, too. Who is he?”

“No one seems to know.” Sister Benedicta’s eyes shifted to Sister Gratia. “Or if they do, they aren’t telling.”

“He hasn’t told me his name. And he was very clear that he wished to remain an anonymous donor.” Sister Gratia spread her hands. “I couldn’t risk upsetting him by insisting he identify himself, not with real money on the line. When was the last time someone gave us cash, and not just their cast-off goods?”

“That’s quite enough,” Sister Benedicta chided. “Let us simply be grateful that someone has been moved to charity, and that we are provided for in our hour of need. Now, Sister Gratia, I believe you have other duties to attend to.”

Sister Gratia nodded and excused herself, and Kyrie turned to Nero. “We should probably get home, too. I didn’t mind letting Tony sleep through breakfast since he had so much rest to catch up on, but we really ought to make sure he’s up in time for lunch.”

Sister Benedicta looked puzzled. “Who is Tony?”

“Oh—one of the twins,” Kyrie explained. “Rosso decided a few weeks ago that he wanted to be called Tony, so we went along with it.”

“Decided?” The headmistress blinked. “I thought Rosso and Zaffiro were just infants. I remember you borrowing diapers for them.”

Kyrie glanced at Nero, and there was a flash of panic in her eyes. “Uh… turns out they’re… a little older than we thought,” Nero temporized. “You wouldn’t believe how big they’ve gotten.”

“Even so, a child usually doesn’t go from wearing diapers to choosing a new name for himself in just a few weeks.” Her sharp eyes bored into Nero, and for an instant he flashed all the way back to his own childhood. “Unless there’s something you haven’t told me?” Her gaze shifted to Kyrie, whom Nero knew was fundamentally incapable of telling a lie, and he realized it was a matter of seconds before the entire complicated story unspooled.

“A lot of things, actually,” he cut in. “We’ve had a _crazy_ amount of stuff happen the last couple months. People staying at the house, the school board checking up on us after that fight, our van got stolen, the whole thing with Gigi, I was working a second job for a while, we found out somebody broke into our garage and messed with our phone, this demon showing up, my friend from school getting killed, these random summonings… It’s been nonstop. I can’t even keep track of who we’ve told what any more.”

Sister Benedicta assumed a look of sympathy, though she remained firm. “I do understand. But with as many children as you have in that house—and many of them our responsibility—you know I need to be kept informed of anything that might affect their wellbeing.” She frowned. “Wait. You said your friend Lady was out at the mines, didn’t you? You haven’t left the twins home alone?”

“No, of course not,” Kyrie assured her. “We have a… house guest.”

“Another one?” Sister Benedicta’s lips thinned, and her eyes flicked to Nero. “Another of your heavily-armed devil hunting associates, I suppose.”

“Well…” Kyrie hesitated.

“It’s my father,” Nero said suddenly. Kyrie shot him a startled look, and he realized he’d never relayed to her that he’d told the headmistress about finding his family. But Nero’s long-lost father coming to visit was one house guest Sister Benedicta couldn’t _possibly_ condemn, as pleased as she’d been to hear that Nero had found his family. “He’s staying with us right now.”

Sister Benedicta’s surprise was short-lived. “I thought you said your father had been in an accident?”

“Yeah, he was. And now he’s recuperating. But he, uh, wanted to be closer to the twins. So.” Nero shrugged. “He’s sleeping on our couch.”

“I see,” Sister Benedicta said, though she looked far from convinced. “I should very much like to meet your father, Nero. Since he’s come all this way to visit you, perhaps you might bring him by and show him where you grew up.”

“Sure, I’ll extend the invite.” Nero mentally crossed his fingers behind his back. “Just as soon as he’s feeling better. Wouldn’t want him to overdo it and have a relapse, you know.”

“Of course,” the headmistress agreed. “Please convey to him my wishes for a swift recovery.”

* * *

“That,” Kyrie sighed as they strolled back toward their house, “was a disaster. I’m so sorry; I never should have mentioned Tony. I don’t know what we’re going to tell her about the twins. You know she’ll want to see them sooner or later. And if she asks the other children about them…”

“We’ll deal with it if it happens.” Nero caught her hand and squeezed it. “And it wasn’t your fault. With everything that’s happened, we were never gonna be able to keep our story straight. But if everything goes according to plan, in a couple more weeks Dante and Vergil will be back to normal and off home again, and we can just tell Sister Benedicta that the twins went back to their own family.” He gave a snort of laughter. “Hell, maybe I’ll actually take Vergil to meet her, and she’ll be so put off by him that she’ll just stop asking _anything_ about my relatives.”

“He does take some adjusting to.” Kyrie sighed. “You know, even with you telling me what to expect, I really kept thinking he’d be more like an older version of Zaffiro—just a bit more reserved, perhaps. But he really is quite…” She bit her lip. “I’m not sure of the right word.”

“The right word begins with A and rhymes with ‘bass pole.’ You may have heard me use it to describe him once or twice.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, but for once didn’t reprimand his crude language. “He is certainly more reticent than I’d expected. I’ve only spoken to Dante a few times, but I don’t remember him being anything like that. Of course Rosso and Zaffiro had their individual personalities, but it’s hard to imagine identical twins becoming so unlike one another. Are they really so different as adults?”

“Yeah, like opposite poles of a magnet. Dante’s pretty laid-back, and even when he’s dead serious about something, he pretends like he isn’t. Then there’s Vergil, who’s got a stick crammed so far up his—”

This time she did object to his choice of words. “ _Nero_.”

“He doesn’t know the meaning of ‘chill,’ is all I’m saying.” They had reached their house, and Nero paused with his hand on the front door knob. “Ready to see just how bad a babysitter he is? I predict we’ll find Tony pinned to the wall with a sharp object. If Vergil was feeling generous, it will only be through his shirt.”

Kyrie rolled her eyes. “I can’t imagine he’d do anything to harm his own brother.”

Nero laughed. “You hang on to that beautiful dream as long as you can, sweetheart.”

When they entered the house, Rosso—free, as far as Nero could tell, of puncture wounds—jumped up from the sofa to greet them. Judging by his enthusiasm, he seemed to have recovered nicely from the days without sleep. “You’re back!” he said brightly. “Can we go to the park or somewhere?”

“Hello to you, too,” Nero replied. “I don’t know about the park; we’ve got some other stuff to do this afternoon. Maybe after the other kids get back from school, you can go with Julio.”

Rosso sank back onto the couch, clearly disappointed. “Okay.”

From the kitchen, they heard the telephone ring, and Kyrie hurried to answer it. Nero paused to hang their jackets in the front closet and cast a sidelong glance at Vergil, who was reading in the armchair as usual. He hadn’t spoken since their return. “So what did you two get up to while we were gone?”

“Nothing,” Rosso sulked, shooting a glare at Vergil. “My brother got _boring_ when he got old.”

Nero prepared himself for Vergil’s reaction, but the only response was a slow and very deliberate page-turn. Nero turned back to Rosso. “I don’t see much difference. I seem to remember him mostly reading and ignoring you even when you were the same age.”

Rosso picked at the seam of a couch cushion. “Yeah, but then I could get him to pay attention to me _sometimes_. Now he just keeps reading no matter what I do.”

Nero chuckled. Apparently Vergil’s rigid discipline had trumped Rosso’s obnoxious antics, at least for one morning. “Well, maybe you should stop harassing him and go wash up for lunch, huh? We’re gonna eat soon.”

Rosso hopped down from the couch and nearly collided with Kyrie, who had appeared in the doorway. As the boy dodged around her, Nero shot out an arm and collared him. “Hey. You forget something?”

Rosso squirmed against Nero’s spectral grip for a second before capitulating. “Excuse me,” he told Kyrie.

“That’s better.” Nero released him and watched him pelt down the hall. “For the record, once he’s an adult again, I take no responsibility for his manners.”

“That shows intelligence on your part,” Vergil said.

“He speaks!” Nero hitched a hip onto the back of the couch. “I was starting to think I was gonna have to get a crowbar to pry you out of that book.”

One of Vergil’s eyebrows twitched, but Kyrie redirected the conversation before he could answer. “Nero, that call was from Sister Benedicta. She spoke with Gianna after we left, and it sounds like she’s ready to meet with Scipio and Flavia. But we agreed that it would be best to do it in private, before all the children come tomorrow. She’d like one of us to explain things to them and, if they’re willing, bring them over this afternoon.”

“That should probably be you. You’re _way_ better at getting everyone to play nice together, and Scipio’s gonna take a lot of convincing. I’ll watch the rest of the kids while you’re gone.”

Kyrie nodded. “I think you’re right. If I prepare everything before I leave, can you put dinner in the oven while I’m gone? I don’t want to rush their reunion.”

“Sure. Or I can just cook tonight, if you want.”

“No, there’s a recipe I’ve been wanting to try. I’ll get it ready after lunch. But remember, you’re on kitchen duty all day tomorrow, while we’re at our training session.”

“Already planning the menu.”

“Sandwiches and pasta?” Kyrie’s eyes twinkled.

“Aw, you peeked.” Nero twisted to glance at the clock. “Hey, I just realized—if I’m going to look for Gigi’s Vespa tonight, that means I need to go right after lunch, so I can be back by the time the kids get home.”

“Go where?” Rosso, shirt cuffs slightly damp, reappeared and squeezed past Kyrie again with a muttered _’scuse me_. He didn’t wait for an answer before adding, “Can I come with you?”

“It’s nothing exciting. Just a…” Nero stopped and nearly laughed. Actually, a big, empty, semi-collapsed warehouse sounded _exactly_ like the sort of place Rosso could safely burn off some of the energy he’d been stockpiling all morning. “I’m gonna go look for a friend’s scooter. It’s a really long walk. I’m not sure you’re up for it.”

“I’m up for it!” Rosso’s voice nearly squeaked in his eagerness. “I never get tired of walking!”

“Well…” Nero drew the word out. “If you’re _sure_ you won’t be bored…”

“I won’t!” The boy was nearly bouncing in place.

“All right, if you promise to behave, you can come.”

Rosso gave a cheer and a double arm-pump—where had he picked _that_ up?—but Kyrie’s brow furrowed. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

Nero shrugged. “We’ll be on main streets most of the way there. Plenty of sidewalks. There’s not much traffic this time of day, anyway.”

“No, I mean…” She gave an expressive chin-nudge. “That area. Isn’t that where Tonio…?”

Oh, it was just the _usual_ kind of danger she was worried about. “No sightings lately, but I can take my gear if it would make you feel better.”

Kyrie hesitated, her eyes swinging to Rosso. Nero knew she preferred that he keep his weapons well away from the children, but Rosso was a special case: Dante, like Vergil, would have received his first sword when he was no more than eight years old, and he looked at least eleven now. “I suppose you had better,” she said at last. “You’ll be safer with Red Queen watching over you.”

Rosso twisted to look up at Nero. “Who’s Red Queen?”

“My pride and joy.” Nero grinned. “I’ll introduce you right after lunch, and then we’ll go Vespa hunting.”

* * *

By some miracle—and contrary to every trend across the increasingly-desperate city—Gianna’s scooter was still parked right where she had left it. Nero circled the vehicle, looking for signs of tampering, but finally decided that it had been left alone precisely because no thieves had wanted to bother with a dirty, decades-old Vespa that already had several dents, a cracked headlight and a leaking front tire.

Nero crouched and prodded the rubber. The tire was flat enough that it gave beneath his finger. “Well, one thing’s for sure, we’re not riding this thing back. I hope you’re up for another long walk.”

“Yeah, I am.” Rosso stared at the filthy streets and alleys around them. Despite his assurances, he’d quickly grown bored with their walk, though at least he wasn’t complaining about it. Perhaps even a mundane sidewalk was an improvement over being stuck in the house with a brother who gave him the silent treatment. “Why are all those buildings falling down?”

“They’re empty warehouses. Nobody’s used them in a long time, and when nobody does maintenance, eventually stuff breaks.”

“Can I go look inside?”

“ _We_ can go, if you help me move this. Grab the handlebar on that side.” Nero didn’t need help rolling the scooter, but he didn’t want Rosso crossing the street on his own, and he doubted the boy would be keen to hold his hand at this age. “Okay, on my signal, push.”

They steered the scooter across the empty street and into the gaping entrance of the warehouse where Nero and Lady had lain in wait for Gianna just a few weeks before. The rubble was unchanged, though Nero found himself scanning the dust for circular cane-marks. Apart from the odd worker’s boot print along the shortcut Tasso had shown him, it appeared no one had been in this building since their last visit.

“Wow, it’s huge!” Rosso jogged forward a few steps and spun in a circle, taking in the vast empty space. “I’ve never seen a building this big! You could play football inside it!”

Nero chuckled at his enthusiasm. He’d wanted to burn off some of the kid’s energy, hadn’t he? “Hey, you think you could run a whole lap around this place without stopping to rest?”

The boy’s eyes lit with challenge, and he took off so fast that Nero didn’t even have a chance to warn him to be careful of the debris and broken glass littering the floor. He dashed around the inside perimeter, hurdling chunks of concrete or garbage where they lay in his path. He was _fast_ —not as fleet as Nero himself, and certainly not as fast as Dante had been as an adult, but there was no doubt he was already coming into his superhuman physical abilities. Not surprising, really, considering how strong the twins had been from the beginning.

Rosso finished his lap and jogged to a halt before Nero, only slightly winded. “How was that?”

“Not bad,” Nero affirmed. “With some training, I think you could even go out for track and field. You ready to…” He trailed off as he saw Rosso’s shoulders tense, and the boy spun to stare at an open loading dock at the far side of the warehouse. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s something over there.” Rosso rubbed at the back of his neck, as though trying to brush away gooseflesh. “Something bad.”

Instantly, Nero was on alert, though he still couldn’t sense anything. “I’ll check it out. You stay right here, by the scooter. If anything comes after you, you run like hell, okay? Don’t wait for me, just go.” He crept toward the loading door, one hand hovering near Red Queen’s grip.

He’d covered about two-thirds of the distance when he heard the tell-tale chittering, and a lone Scarecrow hobbled into view. It rocked in place on its bladed legs for a few seconds before teetering in Nero’s direction. Nero lunged forward, streaking across the remaining space, and swept the Scarecrow into the air with one powerful swing from Red Queen. Three more slashes cut the burlap body to rags, and the demon burst into ash and dust before it ever touched the ground.

Nero listened, sword at the ready, but he heard nothing else. He crept through the loading bay door and looked around the dock area. When he returned to the warehouse, he found Rosso balanced on the Vespa’s seat, poking curiously at the controls. “Hey! I thought you were going to be ready to run?”

The boy shrugged, apparently unperturbed by the fight he’d witnessed. “That was the only one.” He hopped down off the scooter. “Your sword looks really cool. Can I try it?”

Nero planted Red Queen tip-first into the floor. The blade stood a little taller than the boy ogling it. “I think it’s a little too big for you.”

Rosso frowned. “It’s not _that_ big. I bet I could swing it.”

Nero tried to picture the sword Dante had wielded when he’d first met him. Dante had usually worn it across his back, just as Nero did, and he thought the weapon’s blade had been a bit longer than Red Queen’s. He’d heard it had been broken in the fight with Urizen, but up to that point, Nero had never seen Dante without it. “All right, I’ll let you try. But first, you tell me about _your_ sword.”

Rosso’s eyes snapped to Nero’s, and his expression turned wary. “I don’t have a sword.”

“Not here. In the other place. Your father gave you one, didn’t he?”

The boy’s enthusiasm dimmed, but he nodded.

“Was it a great big one with a skull on it?”

Rosso’s eyes widened. “You know about the Rebellion?”

“I keep telling you, I knew you two before you got your memories wiped. You had a bunch of swords, but that one was always your favorite.”

“It’s important.” Rosso scuffed the toe of his shoe in the dust. “Father told me it can awaken a deep nature.”

Nero blinked. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” His toe rooted further into the dirt. “I’ve thought about it a lot, but the only things in nature I can think of that are deep are the ocean, or space, and neither one of them sleeps, so how can they wake up?”

Nero resisted the urge to chuckle at his straightforward logic. “Well, you’re pretty good at solving puzzles. I bet you’ll figure it out someday.”

“Father said I’d understand when it was time.” Rosso squinted. “Can _time_ be deep?”

Nero decided the conversation was in danger of veering too philosophical. “So, you wanna try this baby out?”

Instantly, the boy’s excitement returned. “Yeah!”

“All right. But you gotta be real careful, okay? As important as the Rebellion is to you, that’s how Red Queen is to me, understand? So just swing her gently. And don’t hit anything.”

Rosso nodded and carefully closed his hands on the grip when Nero offered him the hilt. The blade sank briefly toward the floor when Nero let go, but its movement soon stabilized. It was impressive that the boy could even heft the weapon—many of Nero’s fellow Holy Knights had struggled with the weight of their swords, and those hadn’t even been modified like Red Queen.

The blade bobbed and dipped as Rosso tested its center of gravity and inched his hands higher on the grip to compensate. Finally, angling the edge away from Nero, he took a swing. The momentum overbalanced him, and he had to take a quick step to stay upright, but he quickly corrected his position, twisted the sword mid-air, and lunged forward. Then, drawing his leading foot back, he tipped the blade again and executed what would, in more experienced hands, have been a deadly lateral cut.

“Not bad at all.” Nero held out his hand and let Rosso put the sword back into it. He swung Red Queen back into her harness across his shoulders. “When your arms get a little longer, I think you’re gonna do _amazing_ things with the Rebellion. Seriously.”

Rosso beamed at his praise. “I wish I had it here, so you could teach me some cool moves. I like that thing you did earlier, swinging the monster up in the air like that.” He brightened suddenly. “Hey, you said you knew us, right? Does that mean you know where the Rebellion is? Could you get it for me?”

“It’s… a long way away. In another city.” _Probably in pieces_ , he added silently, though he didn’t actually know what had happened to the sword’s remains. He hadn’t seen them enshrined in Dante’s shop anywhere, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t collected them. If the sword had come from Sparda, it likely had some special properties, just as the Yamato did, and Nero had seen that sword broken and made whole again. “But don’t worry—pretty soon you’re gonna get your memories back just like your brother, and then you’ll know where _all_ your swords are. You’ve got some pretty awesome ones that you don’t even know about yet.” He turned back to the Vespa. “Now, we’ve gotta get this scooter all the way back to the house. You’re not too tired from all that sword practice to help me push, are you?”

* * *

Kyrie joined them in the garage as they parked the Vespa in the space previously occupied by Lady’s motorcycle. “Oh, dear. That is in bad shape, isn’t it?”

“She wasn’t exactly putting money into repairs.” Nero pulled his air compressor off a shelf. “I couldn’t find a puncture, so I think the tire just has a slow leak. Probably a busted valve or something. And the engine was burning oil like crazy the one time I saw it running. Nothing I can’t fix, though.”

Kyrie stared at him. “You’re going to tune up her engine, too?”

Nero crouched to attach the air hose to the tire valve. “It’s not a big deal. Besides, I kinda feel like I ought to do something for her, after my ammunition almost blew her hands off.”

“I think it’s a big deal.” Kyrie bent to kiss his cheek. “I think it’s wonderful of you. After what she did to the van, I was afraid you wouldn’t want to help her at all.”

Nero ducked to hide the flush in his cheeks. “Don’t remind me, or I might change my mind.”

“All right, we’ll stop distracting you. Tony, you’re covered in dust! Why don’t you come in and wash up?”

The boy hesitated. “Can I stay out here and watch Nero fix the engine?”

Kyrie deferred to Nero, who shrugged. “As long as you don’t touch anything while I’m working, I don’t mind. Though depending on what I find when I check the engine, I may need to run to Nico’s to pick up some parts.”

“I’ll come with you!” Rosso said eagerly. “I can help carry things.”

Nero chuckled. “You really must have been bored this morning. Okay, sure. I can put you to work.”

* * *

Apart from the short break he took to put dinner in the oven per Kyrie’s instructions, Nero worked on the scooter all afternoon. He was just wiping the grease off his hands when Lady and Trish roared up on Lady’s motorcycle.

Lady stopped her bike just outside the garage and cut the engine. “Is there room for me to park inside, or should I find a place out here?”

“There will be once I move this out.” Nero tossed the rag into the toolbox. “Hey, Tony, wanna give me a hand?”

Rosso hopped up from his seat on the van’s running board. He’d stayed with Nero the whole day, watching him work, asking questions, and occasionally making himself useful by fetching tools. He’d shown a remarkable amount of focus, considering how quickly he often became bored with things. “Can I ride it out?”

“Sure—when you have a license,” Nero countered. “Push it over there, in front of the van.”

When Lady had parked her motorcycle in its usual spot, she and Trish dismounted. “We’re all set for tomorrow,” Trish said. “We could use a few more targets, though.”

Nero glanced around his garage, well-stocked with assorted bits of junk. “I’ve probably got something in here you can use. What did you have in mind?”

“I was thinking… cardboard. Maybe something square. About so big.” She held her hands a short distance apart.

Lady rolled her eyes. “Gee, Trish, what you’re describing sounds _exactly_ like a pizza box.”

“What a marvelous idea!” Trish said with poorly-simulated surprise. “I’ll go see if I can acquire some.”

Lady watched her saunter out and down the street. “I wonder if she thinks she’s fooling anyone.”

“Probably not, but she seems to enjoy pretending. Are things really all good out there?”

Lady nodded. “We’ve got a bench, we’ve got targets—no matter what Trish says, there are plenty—and we’ve got a good backstop. I’ll put all the supplies in the van later tonight and lock it.”

“You’re not taking your bike?”

“No reason to. We’re all going to the same place.” Her eyes moved to the scooter. “Speaking of vehicles, is that Gigi’s?”

“Yeah, apparently she was worried about it.” Nero hefted his tool box back onto a shelf. “Sister Benedicta asked me to pick it up for her.”

Lady tossed him a knowing smirk. “Softie.”

“What was I supposed to do, tell her no? The woman practically raised me.”

“Uh-huh.” Lady’s eyes flicked over the tools and oil pan. “Did the good sister also stipulate an engine overhaul?”

Nero scowled. “Anyway, I gotta go drop this at the orphanage. The kids are all inside, and dinner’s in the oven. Vergil’s probably ignoring them, so make sure nobody burns the house down while I’m gone. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

“Can I come with you?” Rosso piped up.

“I’m just going to drop the Vespa and come back,” Nero said. “Nothing exciting.”

“But I’ve never been to the orphanage.” Rosso frowned. “All the other kids get to go. Can’t I just see it?”

Nero normally wouldn’t have considered taking him, but the boy _had_ been surprisingly well-behaved today… “All right, but we’re not staying. Just there and back.”

Rosso nodded. “Can we ride the Vespa there?”

Nero arched an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re too tired to walk.”

“Of course not!” Rosso protested. “I told you, I don’t get tired walking.”

“Good. Then we’ll walk.”

Rosso immediately realized his mistake. “But riding would be way more cool.”

“The rule is, you have to have a helmet to ride. Do you have a helmet?”

“No.” Rosso pointed at Lady. “But _she_ doesn’t have a helmet, either.”

Lady, who had been watching the debate with amusement, raised her hands. “Don’t drag me into this.”

“Lady is an adult, and is fully responsible for her own safety,” Nero said. “When you’re as old as she is, you can ride without a helmet. Until then, you walk.”

Rosso squinted at Lady. “How old _are_ you, anyway?”

“And that’s our cue to scram.” Nero hustled Rosso toward the Vespa. He glanced back at Lady and, in a stage whisper, told Rosso, “Better hurry out of range! I’ll explain on the way.”

Lady showed her teeth as they rolled the scooter toward the street. “Oh, don’t rush on my account. I’ll still be here when you get back.”

* * *

They were just approaching the orphanage when they encountered Kyrie, Scipio and Flavia exiting the gates. “Hey! I wondered if you’d be done by now.” Nero glanced at the children and took in their serious expressions. “How’d it go?”

“Small steps,” Kyrie said with a trace of a sigh. Her eyes fell on Scipio. “We had a bit of a rocky start, but it could have been worse. I can tell you more about it later.”

“Sure. Hey, if you can hang out for a second, I’ll drop this off and walk home with you.” Nero saw Rosso inching toward the gate. “Tony, why don’t you wait out here with them?”

Rosso pouted. “Can’t I come in with you?”

Kyrie looked up in alarm. “No!” Everyone spun to stare at her, and she clasped her hands. “That is… they’re… getting ready for supper, so they’re very busy. We shouldn’t bother them.”

“Right.” Nero wondered at her reaction, but at least it had stopped Rosso from insisting. “Uh… I’ll just put this in the shed out back, then.”

“We’ll be waiting,” Kyrie replied brightly. “All of us. Right here.” She put a hand on Rosso’s shoulder.

Nero hurried into the yard and pushed the scooter into the garden shed, then ducked in through a back door to leave a message with one of the sisters that it had been delivered. When he returned to the front gate, not three minutes after he’d left, Rosso was already kicking at pebbles with a sulky frown.

“Oh, that was quick! Good!” Kyrie shooed the children before her. “Let’s hurry home so we can have dinner, all right?”

Nero waited until they were halfway back to the house before tugging her back a few steps. “What was all that about?”

She sighed. “Flavia wanted to tell Gianna about some of the things that had happened since she’d seen her. Which was fine, until she got to the fight in the park. She told her that Zaffiro and Rosso were the ones who stopped the boy who was picking on her.”

“…And? What’s the problem? As far as I know, Gianna doesn’t even know they exist.”

“No, but Sister Benedicta was there. And after my slip this morning, she was _very_ curious to know how two purported infants were able to take down an eight-year-old boy.”

“Ah. So that’s why you didn’t want to risk anybody seeing Tony.”

“Exactly. I managed to stall her by saying I didn’t want to discuss it in front of Scipio and Flavia, but we’re going to have to come up with something to tell her very soon.”

“Right.” Nero sighed. “Well, I’ll try to come up with something. At least we have a couple of days before we have to face the music.”

“I’m not sure a couple of days is enough.” Kyrie’s eyes fell on Rosso’s back. “I suppose there are worse fates than being caught in a lie.”

Nero gave a humorless chuckle. “You only say that because you’ve never had to face Sister Benedicta after you were caught.”

“You’re not making me feel better about this. I would hate for her to think she can’t trust me.”

“You’ll be fine,” Nero assured her. “I’ll throw myself under the bus if necessary.”

“Nothing doing.” She took his hand. “We face everything together, remember? Good or bad. We promised.”

“I remember.” He squeezed her fingers. “Worst case scenario, I just tell her the truth. About everything.”

Kyrie eyed him. “Are you comfortable with her knowing who you really are?”

“Not really, but…” He sighed. “Of all the Order’s die-hard followers, she’s probably the one I trust the most. I mean, it’s not like she’s got some crazy world-domination scheme up her sleeve like Agnus or Sanctus. She just wants to help kids.”

Kyrie leaned against Nero’s shoulder and gazed at the three children walking before them. “Don’t we all.”


	50. Chapter 50

The next morning was slightly more chaotic than usual, as Lady, Trish and Kyrie were preparing to leave just after breakfast to pick up the sisters at the orphanage for the firearms training. Nico, who would be driving, had arrived early to take advantage of Kyrie’s cooking—though she hadn’t anticipated finding Nero hovering over the stove. She scowled as she leaned into the kitchen. “Aww, why’re _you_ cookin’ the one time I actually manage t’ haul my sleepy ass—”

“Hey!” Nero jerked his head toward the table, where half a dozen children were settling into their seats.

“—orted body parts out o’ bed in time to get over here for breakfast?”

Nero scooped some very burnt eggs onto a plate. “You’re welcome to cook something for yourself, if I’m not up to your usual standards. The stove’s hot.”

“Nah, I never cook if I can help it.” She wrinkled her nose at the skillet. “What _is_ that, anyways?”

Nero sighed and jabbed at the black crust lining the pan. “It’s supposed to be _colazione americana_. Only I don’t quite have that whole fried egg part down.”

“Morning,” Lady said as she leaned around the corner. “Oh! Hi, Nico. We’re ready to load up as soon as we eat.” She snagged one of the plates from the counter, then stared at it for several seconds without moving. “Did this used to be an egg?”

“Yeah, I know, cooking is not my strongest skill,” Nero muttered, passing out plates to the children. “You can eat around it if you don’t like it.”

Lady poked at the charred mass with a fork. “What did you fry it in?”

Nero pointed to the skillet on the stove. “A frying pan. What else?”

“No, I mean what kind of fat did you use? Butter, olive oil, lard…?”

Nero blinked. “Fat?”

Lady pressed her lips together in a valiant attempt to keep from laughing, but a giggle slipped through. “Look, we’ve still got a couple minutes. Shove over.” She squeezed past Nero and surveyed the stove. “Oh, I see we’re going full American today. You made bacon, too, right?”

“Yeah, on the griddle.”

“Bacon grease will do nicely.” Lady positioned the griddle over the heat, waited a moment for the congealed grease on its surface to melt, then expertly cracked an egg and split the shell one-handed. “Medium heat, to keep it from burning. If you want it sunny-side-up, you just wait for the egg white to cook through. If you want it over easy, you flip it and give it a few seconds on the other side. For an _americana_ , you don’t want to cook it any more than that, because you want the yolk to stay runny so you can mop it up with toast when it runs all over your plate.”

At the table, Julio crinkled his nose. “Ew. People actually eat it like that?”

“Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.” Lady flipped the egg, turned off the heat, then scooped it off the griddle and dropped it onto a waiting plate. “One perfectly-fried egg. What am I bid?”

“Ooh! Pick me!” Nico waved her hand in the air. “I don’t wanna get poisoned by Nero’s cookin’.”

Nero snatched the plate with Lady’s egg out of reach. “Just for that, it goes to Kyrie.”

“What goes to me?” Kyrie leaned in from the hallway. “Goodness! This kitchen is packed beyond capacity.”

Nero quickly added toast and bacon—only slightly burned—to Kyrie’s plate and passed it overhead. “Yeah, if this keeps up I’m gonna have to install double-decker seating. Nico, why don’t you take your food out in the living room?”

“You want me to eat with… _you-know-who_ starin’ at me?” she hissed. “The eggs were bad enough, but that’s just plain _mean_.”

“Last I saw, Vergil was headed for the shower. He’s not even there.”

“But what if he comes back?”

Nero rolled his eyes. “Then go in the garage! Just make some room for Kyrie to get in here, will you?”

Lady collected her own plate and one for Trish and nudged Nico out into the hallway. “Come on. We can go over our checklist while we eat. I’ll bring the dishes back in when we’re done.”

When they’d gone, Kyrie squeezed into the kitchen and accepted a cup of coffee from Nero. “Thank you. Good morning, children.” There was a chorus of “good mornings” from around the table, muffled by various stages of chewing. “Remember, you have your after-school activities today.”

Rosso perked up at that. “Can I go too?”

Kyrie threw a quick glance at Nero. “I don’t think so, Tony. You aren’t a ward of the orphanage, so you aren’t accounted for in their program.” Rosso deflated a little, and Kyrie continued addressing the group. “Now, I’m going to be away for part of the day, so I won’t be here when you get home from the orphanage. I’ll try to be home by dinner time, but if I’m a little late, I don’t want you to worry.”

Carlo glanced from Kyrie to Nero with obvious concern. “Does that mean Nero is going to be making dinner?”

“Yes.”

Kyle poked at the egg-shaped briquette on his plate. “Could Miss Lady make dinner for us, instead?”

Kyrie suppressed a smile. “No, Miss Lady is going to be with me.”

Flavia, who had bravely sampled her egg and immediately spit it back out, looked thoughtful. “We could stay at the orphanage for dinner,” she suggested. “Then I could eat with Gigi.”

“No!” Scipio shoved his plate away and slammed his shoulders back against his seat. “I don’t want to go to the orphanage.”

Flavia turned to him in disbelief. “But… Gigi is there now!”

Scipio rattled off something in furious Italian before shoving away from the table and leaving the room. Nero couldn’t catch his words, but their effect on Flavia was instantaneous: Her lower lip began to tremble, and tears welled in her eyes. Kyrie hurried to comfort her, but glanced back over her shoulder at Nero. “Could you…?”

“On it.” Nero ducked out of the kitchen and headed for the boys’ bedroom. Scipio was already scrunched at the far corner of his bunk, arms crossed, expression stony. Nero sat on the next bed, keeping his posture casual. “So. Family reunions not your thing, huh?”

Scipio said nothing. He glared harder.

“Yeah, I get it. Sometimes there are people who do things that really hurt you, or make you angry, and it’s hard to get past that. It’s even harder when it’s your family. It feels like they betrayed you.” Nero shifted so that he was leaning against the head of Rosso’s bed, mirroring Scipio’s position. “But the problem is, it’s not just about you, and how you feel about it. Because you may never want to see Gianna again—and I can’t blame you for feeling that way, I know how it feels to get left behind—but I _know_ you care about Flavia.”

Scipio remained silent, but he was watching Nero now, his face reading less open hostility and more uncertainty.

“See, something kinda like this happened to me, too. There was this guy I knew—he was kind of like a… a mentor, you know, somebody I looked up to. He helped me out a lot, and I wanted to earn his respect. Make him proud of me, I guess. But after a while, I found out this guy had a brother. Now the brother, he was a pretty awful person. He did some bad things, and he… stole something from me. And I couldn’t forgive him for what he did to me.” Nero flexed the fingers of his right hand. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive him.”

Scipio had given up any pretense of sulking and was staring at Nero in rapt attention.

“But what I came to realize was, I couldn’t have it both ways. See, I still wanted the first guy, that mentor, in my life. _He_ still mattered to me. But he also cared about his brother, and he wasn’t going to give him up just because I had a problem with him. Even though the brother and I didn’t get along, I realized it wasn’t fair to put all the pressure on the first guy to try to keep the peace between us. So I had a choice to make: Could I learn to tolerate someone I was angry at for the sake of someone who was important to me? Or was I _so_ angry that I would give up someone who mattered to me just to keep that other person out of my life?”

“What did you do?” whispered Scipio.

Nero shrugged. “I decided holding on to my anger wasn’t worth losing someone I cared about. So I learned to live with the brother. I haven’t forgotten what he did to me, and I don’t know if I’ll ever really trust him, but we have a kind of truce now. And that guy I looked up to? He’s a lot happier now. Because he cared about both of us, and he didn’t want to see us fighting, either.”

Scipio looked down at his hands and said nothing.

“Here’s the thing.” Nero turned to face Scipio squarely. “I’m not gonna tell you that you have to forgive Gianna. That might happen some day, or it might not, but you can’t force it. I won’t even tell you that you have to go see her. If you really don’t want to go to the orphanage, you don’t have to. But I will say this: Flavia’s the one caught in the middle. She loves Gigi, and she loves you, and if you try to make her pick sides, it’s only going to hurt her more. Maybe you’re not ready to give up your anger and try to get along with Gigi, and that’s okay—but maybe there’s something you can do that would make it easier on Flavia.”

“Like what?” Scipio mumbled. He looked miserable.

“Like… maybe you could go to the orphanage with the others, but just tell Sister Benedicta that you don’t want to spend more time alone with Gigi just yet. You can be in the same building without talking to her, right?”

Scipio nodded.

“So maybe you just try to coexist for a while. Be in the same place at the same time. That way Flavia can spend time with both of you, and she doesn’t feel like you’re cutting _her_ out of your life. What do you think?”

“I think I can do that.” Scipio slowly uncoiled from his balled position. “If I don’t have to see Gianna, I can go there.”

“Okay. Good call. You let me know how it goes, okay?” Nero stood. “Now I don’t want to rush you, but you’d better hustle, or you’re going to be late for school.”

Scipio collected his bag, and Nero hurried him out into the hall—where he nearly collided with Vergil, who had apparently finished his shower. Surprisingly, Vergil stepped back out of their way without so much as a disapproving glare.

“Oh, good,” Kyrie said as she saw them heading for the front door. “The others just left, so you’ll be able to catch up with them at the corner. You have your lunch? All right. Have a good day!” She waved farewell to Scipio, then closed the door behind him. “How did that go?” she asked Nero.

“I convinced him to go to the orphanage for Flavia’s sake, but he is really not happy about having Gigi back.”

Kyrie nodded. “He hardly said a word to her yesterday. Losing both his parents, and then having his sister leave a few months later… I think it made him very angry and very bitter.”

“But not Flavia?”

“No, Flavia was overjoyed to see her again. I’m sure the past year was hard on her too, but she was only three when their parents died, and there’s a certain elasticity that children have when they’re that young. They’re more adaptable, in some ways. She didn’t seem to blame Gianna at all. In fact, she didn’t want to let her out of her sight. I had to peel her away at the end of the session.”

“Maybe she was just afraid she’d disappear again.” The clock on the mantel chimed, and Nero twisted to look at it. “Hey, you guys had better hit the road if you’re gonna be at the orphanage on time. You got everything you need?”

“I hope so.” Kyrie retrieved her coat from the closet, and Nero held it for her as she shrugged it on. “I put our lunches in the van first thing this morning… Lady said she’d taken care of the safety equipment… What am I forgetting?”

“To relax and have a good time.” Nero turned her around by the shoulders and kissed her before opening the door to the garage. “You be safe out there.”

“I will. Stay out of trouble while we’re gone.”

Nero laughed. “I’ll be cleaning the house all day. How much trouble can I possibly get into?”

“One never knows, where you’re concerned.” She winked and hurried out to the waiting van.

Nero waved at Lady in the passenger seat, waited for the van to pull out, and closed the garage door after it. He went back inside and took a moment to appreciate just how still and peaceful the house was. He knew there had been a time, that first year after Credo died, when the house had _always_ been this silent, but he couldn’t begin to remember what that had been like. Ever since the orphanage had reached capacity and they’d taken in Julio, and later Carlo and Kyle, it seemed the walls of the house had quaked with the children’s boisterous energy. And now it wasn’t just the children, but Lady, and Trish, and…

Nero glanced around the empty living room. Where _was_ Vergil, anyway?

He heard a rattle from the direction of the kitchen, and followed it to an astounding sight: Vergil, the long sleeves of his turtleneck pushed above the elbow, was washing dishes. “Oh… uh, hey,” Nero stammered, “you don’t have to do that. I can get those.”

Vergil set a plate in the drainer. “Lady mentioned a certain… standard trade-off, I believe she called it. I haven’t contributed to the food preparation; therefore, I am discharging related duties.”

“Wow.” Nero retrieved a towel and began to dry the dishes. “That was probably the most long-winded ‘you cook, I clean’ in history.” He set the dish into the drainer and reached across with his right hand for the plate Vergil was rinsing.

Vergil opened his mouth to say something more, but just then his eyes fell on Nero’s extended arm, and he froze. A second later he put the plate into Nero’s hand and returned to his task as though he had never intended to speak.

Nero waited for the rebuttal he was sure had been on Vergil’s lips, but it never came. They finished the dishes in silence.

* * *

The first half of the day was blissfully uneventful.

At Nero’s behest, Lady had picked up a couple of cheap jigsaw puzzles at a resale shop for emergency entertainment. Shortly after breakfast, one of these went to Rosso, with instructions to assemble it in his bedroom. Given how little Lady had paid for it, the puzzle was likely missing a few of its five hundred pieces, but Nero guessed that the boy wouldn’t figure that out for at least a few hours—and Rosso had never yet met a puzzle that didn’t captivate his full attention.

Leaving Vergil to entertain himself with the books he kept digging out of the boxes in the garage, Nero determined to get through as much housework as possible before Kyrie came home so he didn’t to leave her to face unfinished chores while they were off hunting the Nilepoch for the rest of the week. He cleaned the bathroom, swept the laundry room and dusted the bedrooms before lunch. After a pause to assemble three sandwiches and consume one of them, he scrubbed all the kitchen surfaces and wiped down the cabinets. He was just starting on a deep clean of the oven when he heard the front door open.

Nero rocked back on his heels as Julio entered the kitchen. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going to the orphanage after school.”

Julio wriggled out of his backpack and deposited it on a kitchen chair. “I dropped the others off there, but I have a test tomorrow and I need to study. It’s quieter here, so I can focus better.”

“And… you actually _want_ to study?” Nero stared at him. “Okay, who are you and what have you done with the real Julio?”

Julio scowled. “I don’t _want_ to, but Coach says I need to bring my grades up if I want to be on the team next season.”

“Oh, right, I forgot about that rule.” Nero stood and stretched. “I had to do some scrambling myself to stay on the football team. Second-year Italian nearly got me booted.”

Julio’s eyes widened. “You were on the football team? You never told me that!”

“Yeah, well, it was only for half a season. I was a mid-year replacement for a guy who broke his ankle.”

“Aw. You didn’t try out again the next year?”

Nero shook his head. “By then, I’d enlisted in the Holy Knights. The Order frowned on their recruits taking time off from training for school activities.”

“Oh. Yeah, from what you told me, they seemed kinda strict, with they way they dressed, and everything.” Julio began unloading books and papers from his bag. “Speaking of which, I saw that old guy again today.”

Nero blinked. “Old guy?”

“The one I saw at the park, before. You know, you said he was probably a lonely old man, and the hood was an Order thing? I’ve seen him around a few times since then.”

“Oh, right, the guy with the cowl.” Nero frowned. “But you weren’t at the park today, were you?”

“No, we passed him on the way to the orphanage. I would have stopped to talk to him, but I had all the kids with me.”

“Huh.” Something nagged at Nero’s memory. “Are you sure it was the same man?”

Julio shrugged. “I think so. He’s always dressed the same, and he uses a cane. I don’t think there would be two people exactly like that.”

_Cane_. The missing piece snapped into place. “Son of a—” Nero caught himself just short of releasing a truly profane outburst and smothered the words into an inarticulate growl. He seized Julio’s shoulders and met the boy’s wide, startled gaze. “Listen: You see that man again, you stay _way_ the hell away from him, and you call me right away, okay?”

“O-okay,” Julio stammered, “but why? Who is he?”

“That’s what I need to find out. There’s a chance he could be responsible for some recent demon attacks around town.”

“Demon attacks?” Julio’s eyes stretched even wider. “Crap. And here I was feeling sorry for him.”

The phone rang then, and Nero released Julio’s shoulders to answer it. “Hello?”

“Nero!” He recognized Sister Gratia’s frantic, breathless voice. “We need you right away! The demons have returned!”

Nero swore under his breath. “I’m on my way.” He slammed down the receiver and bolted from the room. It wasn’t until he’d retrieved his gun from upstairs and returned to the ground floor that he caught sight of Julio’s anxious face, framed in the kitchen doorway. From farther down the hall, Rosso had emerged from the bedroom and was watching with undisguised curiosity. Nero would have liked to explain the situation, but time was critical. “You two, stay here. Julio’s in charge. I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay?”

Julio gave a tight nod. “Okay.”

Nero ran for the front of the house. Given the increasingly dangerous varieties of demons that had been appearing lately, he couldn’t risk any escaping into the city. He wanted backup in case one slipped past him. “Saddle up,” he said as he swung into the living room. “We got demons to kill.”

Vergil set aside his book. “The Nilepoch has returned?”

Nero shook his head as he pulled on his coat. “There’s another pack at the orphanage. I’m guessing these were summoned by the same bastard who did the last bunch.” He adjusted the coat over Blue Rose’s holster, then glanced at Vergil, standing in apparent readiness. But something was missing… “Damn! I forgot. You need a sword.”

Vergil held out his hand. A coil of ice-colored flame gathered in his palm, then swirled outward and solidified. When the cool light faded, the Yamato’s distinctive sheath rested in Vergil’s fingers. “I think this one will do.”

“Holy shit.” Nero stared at the all-too-familiar weapon, and a phantom tingle ran through his right arm. “You had that all along? I thought it must have been destroyed when the Nilepoch zapped you!”

“It takes far more power than the Nilepoch possesses to damage the Yamato.” A shadow flicked across Vergil’s face, but before Nero could wonder about it, the expression vanished. “This blade is bound to my soul. When I was struck unconscious, it merely returned to its passive state.”

“You mean you… absorbed it?”

“In simple terms, yes.”

“Huh. I thought only Dante could do that.” Nero retrieved Vergil’s overcoat from the closet and tossed it to him. “Here.”

Vergil snatched the coat from the air with one hand. “I acquired this skill long before Dante did.” He cocked his head at Nero as he donned the garment. “As did you, if I’m not mistaken.”

Nero had never connected Dante’s ability to summon his sword from thin air with the fact that his own arm had housed the Yamato for years. “Yeah, well… my arm absorbed all sorts of random crap. Anything with arcane power, really. It wasn’t exactly the same thing.” Discussing his arm with the man who had torn it off wasn’t exactly a comfortable topic, either. “Besides, it’s not like I can just whip Red Queen out of nowhere.”

“That’s because your sword is not a Devil Arm. Weapons formed from a piece of a soul can be linked to your own. Human-forged steel cannot.”

“Well, I’m sure as hell not trading her in for a more portable version.” Nero jerked his head toward the door. “Let’s move. The girls have got the van, so we’re on foot. Unless…” He glanced toward the garage. “How pissed do you think Lady would be if we borrowed her bike without asking?”

The corners of Vergil’s lips twitched in a faint approximation of a smile. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Urizen dematerializes the Yamato and absorbs it in DMC5, so I’m assuming Vergil has retained that power along with SDT. There’s also some evidence in _Deadly Fortune_ that kind of suggests that Vergil’s soul is linked to the sword. (If you squint.) :)


End file.
